Liam Lawson will race for Racing Bulls again at this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku. Red Bull has confirmed that Isack Hadjar is fit to return from the wrist injury that kept him out for three races. The 24-year-old from Pukekohe leaves the senior team’s car with 14 points from his stint there and a much better reputation inside Red Bull than he had when the team dropped him last year.
Red Bull announced the change early this week. “Having made a successful recovery from his wrist injury, Isack will return to action at the Baku City Circuit on Thursday,” the team said in a statement carried by Formula 1. It went out of its way to thank the New Zealander. “The team would like to sincerely thank Liam for his professionalism, dedication and hard work over the past three races. Stepping in under challenging circumstances, he delivered some impressive performances and made a valuable contribution to the team,” Red Bull said, as reported by RNZ.
The NZ Herald reported that Hadjar passed a final fitness test in the team’s simulator before he was cleared. The French driver hurt his wrist while training during the Formula One summer break and has not raced since.
The reshuffle puts everyone back where they started the season. Hadjar rejoins Max Verstappen at Red Bull. Lawson goes back to Racing Bulls alongside British rookie Arvid Lindblad. Yuki Tsunoda, who drove Lawson’s Racing Bulls car while Lawson was stepping up, goes back to being the reserve driver for both teams, according to RacingNews365.
Lawson was called up at short notice in August and finished seventh at Zandvoort on his return to the Red Bull car. He qualified just 0.115 seconds behind Verstappen there, with only one practice session to learn the car on a sprint weekend. Verstappen crashed on the opening lap of the race, which left Lawson as the only Red Bull driver to score at the Dutch Grand Prix.
The Italian Grand Prix went badly. An engine change sent him to the back and he started from the pit lane, then contact with Nico Hulkenberg damaged his front wing and he finished 14th. He made up for it at the new Madring circuit, where he finished sixth at the Spanish Grand Prix. That result took him to 59 points for the season and past the 51 points Denny Hulme scored in his 1967 title year, the biggest single-season tally by a New Zealander. Points were much harder to come by in Hulme’s day, when only the top six scored and a win was worth nine.
Three races, two points finishes and 14 points is a very different story from Lawson’s first go in the senior car. Red Bull promoted him at the start of 2025, then dropped him after two races in Australia and China without scoring a point and sent him back to the junior team. This time the team has made a point of praising him publicly as he leaves.
Going back to Racing Bulls may not be a bad thing for Lawson this weekend. Baku has been kind to him. A year ago he qualified third there and finished fifth, which was the best result of his Formula One career at the time, the Herald noted. Racing Bulls has also been a competitive car this season, and Lawson had strung together a run of points finishes in it before the summer break, including fifth at Monaco and sixth in both Austria and Britain.
The team will want him back quickly. The Herald reported that Racing Bulls’ lead over Alpine in the constructors’ championship has shrunk to 11 points while Lawson was away. Tsunoda finished 11th at Zandvoort, just outside the points, so every point Lawson can add from here matters to the team.
The Azerbaijan weekend runs a day earlier than usual. Practice starts on Thursday, qualifying is on Friday and the race is on Saturday, because Sunday 27 September is Remembrance Day in Azerbaijan. For New Zealand fans that means the action starts on Thursday night, New Zealand time.
Hadjar’s return settles the question for now, but it does not settle Lawson’s future. Red Bull has not said anything about its 2027 line-up, and the three-race stint was the longest look the senior team has had at Lawson since it demoted him. He went into the Madrid race weekend as a stand-in and came out of it ninth in the drivers’ championship, where he sits heading to Baku.
For a driver who had to rebuild his reputation after being dropped last year, the past month has done him no harm. Red Bull put him in a car he had barely driven, he scored points in two of the three races, and he went close to Verstappen’s pace in qualifying at Zandvoort. Now he goes back to the car he knows best, on a circuit where he has done well before.
Did Liam Lawson do enough in the Red Bull to earn a full-time seat in 2027, or is he better off building at Racing Bulls? Tell us what you think 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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