Liam Lawson has produced the best Monaco Grand Prix result by a New Zealander in more than half a century, fighting through a chaotic and crash-strewn race to finish fifth for Racing Bulls. It is the highest placing by a Kiwi at the famous street circuit since Denny Hulme stood on the podium in third back in 1973, and it came after a morning that very nearly ended before Lawson had even turned a wheel.
The result, at a delayed and dramatic running of the showpiece event, equalled the career-best fifth that Lawson recorded at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix last season. Coming on the unforgiving streets of Monte Carlo, where track position is everything and overtaking is famously close to impossible, this one carried far more weight.
What made it remarkable was how close he came to not starting at all. In the half hour before the lights went out, Lawson’s car developed a serious mechanical problem and the Racing Bulls mechanics were still piecing both cars together in the pit lane as the rest of the grid prepared to launch. Lawson admitted he had all but given up hope of racing. “I didn’t think I was going to race, I turned up to the garage and we had issues and I saw the car in pieces,” he told reporters afterwards, as quoted by RNZ.
The team got him to the grid in time, and from his starting slot of tenth the race began to open up almost immediately. Reigning four-time world champion Max Verstappen stalled at the start and retired within a lap, an early gift that lifted Lawson into ninth on the opening tour. From there he kept his head as the carnage unfolded around him, picking off positions as retirements, penalties and incidents thinned out the field ahead of him.
It was that kind of afternoon. The race featured two safety car periods and a late red flag, the latter brought out when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc crashed at the final corner and officials needed to inspect the damaged barriers. Seven drivers failed to finish, including McLaren’s Lando Norris, who retired with a mechanical failure. In a race of attrition on a circuit where staying out of the walls is half the battle, Lawson did exactly that, keeping his car clean and his nerve steady while others fell away.
He was not alone in giving Racing Bulls a day to remember. Rookie teammate Arvid Lindblad came home sixth, having started 15th, for the best Formula 1 result of his young career. A double points finish in Monaco, with both cars inside the top six, represented a major lift for a team that has spent much of the season scrapping in the midfield. Lawson was understandably pleased with how it all came together. “For us it’s a good result, it feels really good especially where we started,” he said.
The victory itself went to 19-year-old Kimi Antonelli, who took his fifth consecutive win for Mercedes and became the youngest driver ever to triumph at Monaco. The Italian teenager’s run of form has been the story of the championship, but for New Zealand fans the headline belonged to Lawson and the company he now keeps in the record books.
That company is rarefied. Denny Hulme, the only New Zealander to win the Formula 1 world title, took third at Monaco in 1973 in a McLaren, and no Kiwi had bettered or matched the calibre of that street-circuit result until now. Hulme, the 1967 world champion known as “The Bear” for his no-nonsense manner, remains one of the towering figures in New Zealand motorsport. For Lawson to be measured against him at the same corner of the calendar is a marker of just how far the 24-year-old from Hastings has come.
The points move Lawson up to ninth in the drivers’ championship on 26, a tally that reflects a season of steady progress after the turbulence of his earlier stint at the senior Red Bull squad. Dropped back to Racing Bulls at the start of the year, Lawson has quietly rebuilt his standing, and a result like Monaco does more for a driver’s reputation than almost any other on the calendar. Strong runs at the slow, technical, mistake-punishing tracks tend to be the ones rivals and team principals remember.
For a driver who has had to absorb plenty of criticism and setbacks since arriving in Formula 1, the timing could hardly be better. Monaco is the race every driver wants on their record, and to deliver there from the back of a near-disaster in the garage speaks to both the composure Lawson has developed and the way Racing Bulls have steadied as a unit. The team principal and engineers who scrambled to rebuild his car will take as much satisfaction from the fifth place as the driver himself.
Lawson now heads into the next round of the season with momentum and a result that finally puts a New Zealander back near the front at the sport’s most prestigious event. More than fifty years after Hulme’s podium, a Kiwi is once again a name to watch on the streets of Monte Carlo. You can read the full race report at the NZ Herald and 1News.
What did you make of Lawson’s drive at Monaco, and where does it rank among New Zealand’s great Formula 1 moments? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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