Liam Lawson finished seventh in the Dutch Grand Prix early on Monday morning New Zealand time, scoring the first championship points of his career as a Red Bull driver and ending a stand-in weekend that could hardly have gone more differently from his last one in the senior team’s car.
The 24 year old from Pukekohe was only in the seat because Isack Hadjar hurt his wrist in a gym session during the Formula One summer shutdown. Red Bull confirmed the change in the middle of last week, moving Lawson up from the junior Racing Bulls team and handing Yuki Tsunoda the car Lawson had been driving all season. Newswire covered the call-up on Thursday.
It was Lawson’s first time in a Red Bull since March 2025, when the team dropped him after two rounds in Australia and China without a point and sent him back to the junior outfit. This time he had one hour of practice, a sprint session and a sprint race to learn the RB22 before qualifying, and he used them well enough to reach the final part of qualifying for the first time as a Red Bull driver. He put the car eighth on the grid, 0.115 seconds behind four time world champion Max Verstappen.
The race itself was wet, windy and short of running for the team. Verstappen crashed heavily at the final corner on the opening lap in front of his home crowd, bringing out a red flag and leaving Lawson as the only Red Bull still running. Lando Norris won for McLaren from Kimi Antonelli and George Russell, with Lewis Hamilton fourth, Charles Leclerc fifth and Oscar Piastri sixth. Lawson came home seventh, just under 80 seconds behind Norris, according to the full classification published by PlanetF1.
Seventh place is worth six points, and Lawson was honest afterwards about how the afternoon had felt from inside the car.
“Today was hard,” he told Speedcafe. “The first lap was quite fun. But from then we just struggled for pace, to match the front guys at least.”
He said the sprint had already told him what to expect. “I feel like after yesterday, I knew it was going to be a hard race. We were both behind them, and I feel like I did a pretty good lap yesterday. So yeah, I knew it was going to be hard. Probably not that hard. Like we really struggled to keep up with the front teams. But I’m sure this stuff I can learn from it.”
Lawson also picked up a ten second time penalty late in the race for not slowing enough under yellow flags, an incident triggered by Esteban Ocon’s retirement. It made no difference to the result because Nico Hulkenberg, the next car home, was a full lap behind. Lawson said he had not worked out what had happened until the stewards told him.
“I have absolutely no idea what happened,” he said. “I think it was a yellow flag. I think it must have been Ocon. But when I got the yellow, I feel like I was like next to his, around his car. I didn’t see it before. So yeah, not my intention. But I obviously didn’t slow down enough. So I’ll learn from that. It’s not ideal.”
Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies made a point of defending the drive. With Verstappen out on the first lap, the team had nobody to measure Lawson against for the rest of the race.
“You know it’s so difficult nowadays to jump from a team to another. So I think Liam did what he could,” Mekies said. “He obviously did a very good job in qualifying yesterday, being only a tenth away from Max. Today he was a bit on a race on his own. We are missing the reference from Max. So no judgment on the pace. But he took the points of the seventh place, and that’s probably the best he could have done today.”
Speaking to Sky Sports F1 before the race, Mekies had been blunter about how much the weekend mattered given what happened the first time. “It’s a very very strong demonstration that Liam has been doing this weekend. One tenth from Max, jumping to a team from another,” he said. “It’s easy to forget that one year ago he had a pretty nightmare experience here in the first two races. And today he has proven that he can still do it.”
What changed between the two attempts, on Lawson’s account, was mostly a matter of stubbornness about the cockpit. In 2025 he tried to fit himself around a car set up for Verstappen. This time he did not.
“I went into last year — obviously, thought I was going to have more time in the car — so I was more or less just adapting to everything that Max had in the car, and there was a lot of stuff just like pedals, steering, everything like that, that was different for me that I didn’t have time to get used to,” Lawson told Auto Action after qualifying. “And this weekend, I just said let’s make it as close to my car as possible and forget everything that he has, and just try and make it as close to my car feeling-wise, and I think that helped.”
He was also clear that the RB22 bore very little resemblance to the Racing Bulls car he has raced all year. “Honestly, the best way I can describe it is outside of the power unit, every single thing feels different,” he said. “The way the steering feels versus how the car moves, balance through corners, obviously the high-speed grip, everything’s different about it.”
Asked whether the weekend proved a point, Lawson kept the answer to himself and everyone else. “I mean, obviously, for me, it’s something I’ve always known, and certainly for me that different circumstances and things would have gone differently, but obviously maybe to you guys and to the world now you can see it as well,” he said.
The six points lift Lawson back to ninth in the drivers’ championship on 47, five clear of Alpine’s Pierre Gasly in tenth and comfortably the leading driver outside the four front running teams. Antonelli leads the standings on 242 from Russell and Hamilton, both on 183.
The stand-in job now looks like a one off. Mekies said the aim is to have Hadjar fit for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, which would put Lawson back in the Racing Bulls car. “We will push very hard to have him back in Monza. That’s the target,” Mekies said. “We are not doctors, but we are working, and Isaac is very disciplined in making sure we have the maximum chance to have him back in Monza.”
Zandvoort will not get another chance to host this particular story. The Dutch Grand Prix drops off the Formula One calendar after this season, so this was the last running of the race at the seaside circuit north west of Amsterdam.
What did you make of Lawson’s return to Red Bull, and should the team be looking at him again for a full time seat? Leave a comment 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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