How super sub Lawson rose to the challenge of driving this year's Red Bull

The Dutch GP weekend was always going to be difficult for Liam Lawson after he was parachuted into Red Bull Racing at the last minute, but the New Zealander excellently did the job that he was asked to do.

The Red Bull RB22 and Racing Bulls VCARB 03 may share the same power unit, but they are very different beasts, and heading into a busy Sprint weekend schedule with just a day in the Milton Keynes simulator with which to adapt to the former was a big challenge.

Throw in the fact that Lawson was being benchmarked against Max Verstappen at the four-time World Champion’s home race – and his obvious desire to find redemption after his aborted two-race stint at Red Bull in 2025 – and the pressure was on.

Given that at Zandvoort Red Bull had clearly slipped to the back of the top four group, his eventual P7 was as much as he could be expected to achieve.

“Liam has done a good job stepping into the car,” Team Principal Laurent Mekies acknowledged on Sunday evening. “It's never easy to step into a different team, a different car, for a race like that. And he's done a good job, only one-tenth away from Max yesterday in Qualifying, and today took the points that were available to him pace-wise with the seventh place.”

With only Friday’s FP1 session in which to get up to speed, Lawson took an encouraging P6 in SQ1, but then slipped back to P11 in SQ2. The Sprint didn’t give anyone much chance to move forward, and he finished in the same position.

However, he banked more knowledge and he subsequently progressed through main Qualifying in P14, P8 and P8, which put him right behind Verstappen on the grid.

“It's been very challenging to try and build up in a short space of time,” he said after the session.

“But obviously the target was to keep improving through the weekend, and I think by quali I think that was a good job from everybody to help me get comfortable in the car – or as comfortable as possible. And for me, I feel like I extracted pretty much everything I had out of the car.”

Expanding on his quick progress he said: “As drivers, we all have plenty of self-belief, obviously. So coming into the weekend without expecting too much, I tried to be as prepared as possible. Knowing the speed of the car this year, I just was targeting trying to get as close to Max as possible, and to try and learn from what he was doing.

“So it started honestly maybe a little bit closer than we expected, but just executing each time and making sure we nail each lap.

“It was tricky yesterday in SQ1. We were strong, didn't feel like I did anything special, but then went to SQ2 and felt like I drove a better lap. But compared to everybody else, was a lot slower. So yeah, it's something that's not super clear. But today, I think we executed well.”

It’s easy to underestimate the challenge of adapting to a new car, even if one key element of the package is familiar.

“Honestly, the best way I can describe it is outside of the power unit, every single thing feels different,” said Lawson. “The way the steering feels versus how the car moves, balance through corners, obviously the high-speed grip. Everything's different about it.”

Despite the lack of seat time he was more comfortable than he was during his brief stint with the senior team at the start of last season, when he was switched to Racing Bulls after tricky weekends in Australia and China.

“The main thing honestly last year was there were two tracks I'd never been to,” he noted. “So on top of that, trying to learn a car that was already very hard to drive. I think this car potentially is not so difficult to drive, or difficult to be on the limit.

“So it's more putting everything else together, tyre prep, just getting the balance right in the car and getting used to how it actually drives – versus a car last year that was just very tough to put on the limit.”

The start of Sunday’s race was challenging for everyone given the rain before the start. Lawson got away cleanly and showed he meant business by racing wheel-to-wheel with his team mate through the first few corners before the Dutchman edged ahead.

And then at the banked final corner Verstappen lost control and crashed, obliging the following Lawson to take avoiding action.

“Just impossible,” he noted after the race. “The whole first half of the lap was dry, and then the last two corners were completely soaked. So really easy, obviously, to do that when you have this much power, and on a slick tyre.

“I really lifted out of it, sort of, because honestly, I had no confidence in how much grip I was going to have there. I think Max was probably trying to get close and make an overtake, and just lost it.”

Lawson took the restart in P7, and he stayed there throughout in a no-man’s land between the top six and the chasing midfield pack. Even a 10-second penalty for a yellow flag infringement didn’t impact his result.

“I'm sure there's things that I can do better in the race, and I'll try and reflect on that,” he said. “But in terms of positions, I don't think we had the speed to match the guys at the front. So I feel like we knew that after yesterday as well. Quali was for both of us behind them.

“But it's been a good weekend. It was good to extract everything out of quali yesterday. It's been tough to try and get my head around this car in a short space of time, but I've enjoyed it.”