Liam Lawson has become the tenth New Zealander to enter Formula 1 in the history of the world championship, and will spend his first full season with Red Bull Racing, becoming Max Verstappen's new teammate.
Ahead of the first stage of the season, the Australian edition of GQ magazine published a very extensive interview with the 23-year-old driver, which touched on a wide range of topics.
“I grew up watching Supercars and Formula 1 racing with my dad because I was crazy about cars, like most of the kids I grew up with,” Liam recalls. “Because New Zealand has a strong karting community, when our good drivers go to America or Europe to compete, they often do well.
But many people go karting because their fathers used to race. Although my father watched racing on TV, he was not a fan of motorsports. I was hooked on karting in preschool by my best friend. When I was five, I watched him race and realized that I wanted to do it too.
My first year in the sport, when I was already seven years old, I finished last in every race. I wasn't even close to good results. I think I complained to my dad for over a year about problems with my kart. I said the engine was bad, but he thought it was just me.
Eventually he got fed up with my whining, bought two good engines and we put one of them in the car for the first time before an important race. And I got the best result in qualifying. After that we were always fighting at the front.
“That was the defining moment when karting became a real serious hobby. I always thought it was a serious thing, but for my father, everything changed on that weekend…”
Liam's parents didn't have much money to pay for his motorsports, something he felt even during his karting days. They had to sell their house to keep their son racing.
“They still don't have their own home. Because of me,” he admitted honestly. “But I was very, very lucky. I had sponsors early in my career. I met a wonderful person who spent all his time looking for sponsors for me…”
In 2015, at the age of 12, Liam debuted in the New Zealand Winter Series, becoming the best rookie of the year. In 2017, he won the title in the national Formula Ford, taking 14 victories in 15 races, becoming the youngest champion of this series, and with each success, sponsors showed more and more interest in him.
Some time later, Helmut Marko called him and invited him to join the Red Bull youth program – and the rest is history.
Lawson gradually gained experience, competed in different series, and performed well, but his debut in Formula 1 did not occur until the end of the summer of 2023, when Daniel Ricciardo, at that time racing for AlphaTauri, was injured in practice before the Dutch Grand Prix. Liam was the team's reserve driver and replaced the Australian.
In his debut race he finished 13th – outside the top ten, but two places ahead of his more experienced teammate Yuki Tsunoda. In Monza he was 11th, in Singapore – 9th.
“This was my chance to show what I could do,” Lawson continued. “No matter how well you do in the junior series, the Formula 1 team wants to see you drive a Formula 1 car. And I got this rare opportunity…”
It so happened that Liam replaced Daniel in the Faenza team, which changed its name to RB, for the last six races of 2024. And soon Red Bull confirmed that Lawson would take the place of Sergio Perez and become Verstappen's new teammate.
“I was in touch with Daniel a lot when it was all happening,” Liam said. “I'll always have a huge amount of respect for him. Throughout the whole thing, from the rumours to when it was confirmed, he never said a bad word about me. There was never any personal animosity between us because it wasn't our decision.
It was a team decision and Daniel was very good to me in all situations. Fast forward to December: when I got the seat at Red Bull, of all the drivers, past or present, he was the only one to congratulate me. That says a lot about him as a person…
I know that at the beginning of the year I will be racing on unfamiliar tracks where I have never raced before. But the hardest thing will be to tame a Formula 1 car, which is not comparable to anything else. And now I am completely focused on getting to the right level of speed and becoming the driver that my team needs.”
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