Liam Lawson is to stop being a driver for Red Bull in the last few hours, according to De Telegraaf, a Dutch media outlet, and Yuki Tsunoda will get behind the wheel of Red Bull. The information is expected to be made official in the next few hours.
Lawson to stop being a Red Bull driver
Liam Lawson is going through hell in Formula 1 and the outcome is about to be made official. The New Zealand driver will stop driving the Red Bull after only two races in the World Championship, in which he has had time to star in the worst debut of the Austrian team’s history.
The Red Bull management met this Tuesday in Dubai to make a decision, and the result of this is the confirmation of the change of driver. It has been of no use that Max Verstappen has claimed that the car is difficult to drive, for the team there are no excuses for there being such a difference between one driver and another. After all, Verstappen has fought for the top spots in the two GPs of the season, and Lawson has racked up failure after failure.
Last chance for Lawson
Liam Lawson will still have a chance to prove himself and not say goodbye to Formula 1 at the first hurdle. In a world as voracious as the Grand Circus, if a driver loses his seat so quickly, he will hardly get another chance. In this sense, the team has chosen to give him his last chance at the wheel of the Racing Bulls, given the good performance he showed last season when he replaced Logan Sargeant.
There had been speculation that Argentine driver Franco Colapinto could replace Lawson in the F1 World Championship, but in the end Red Bull’s top brass decided not to take such a drastic decision with the driver, a decision that could have definitively sentenced him.
Tsunoda moves to Red Bull
Liam Lawson will get behind the wheel of Yuki Tsunoda’s car, the driver chosen to be Verstappen’s teammate at Red Bull. Since his arrival as a main driver in F1 in 2021 with AlphaTauri (currently Racing Bulls, the team where he continues to drive), the Japanese driver has been evolving and, according to Helmut Marko, he is ready to take on the challenge of being Verstappen’s teammate. “Yuki Tsunoda is at his best”.
This change is evidence of the Austrian team’s high standards and demands, and they have not hesitated to dismiss drivers in recent years, despite the stability with ‘Checo’ Pérez. It is the eighth driver change since 2025, when it has seen the likes of Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon, established drivers on the World Championship grid, leave.
Confrontation with Fernando Alonso
Liam Lawson arrived at the Grand Circus with an attitude unbecoming of a rookie, displaying a strong and arrogant personality that is of no use to you if you are not able to prove your worth on the track. In his first races, he got into an incomprehensible fight with Fernando Alonso. During the sprint race at the US Grand Prix, with nothing at stake for either of them, Lawson touched the Spaniard’s car, which did not go down at all well with him, even less so his attitude after the incident. “This Alphatauri is an idiot,” he said over the radio.
Far from letting the issue drop, Alonso returned the favor on race day, at the pit exit: “He did exactly what he said he was going to do. He said he would screw me over, and I guess he kept his word. I understand he had a pretty horrible race, so I can understand why he’s upset,” he complained over the radio.
The bickering continued, and in the Qatar Grand Prix, Lawson addressed Alonso with these words for slowing him down. “Alonso intentionally slowed down between 9 and 10 when he aborted his lap. He just sucks, man!” The team corrected him, telling him that the driver who had slowed him down was Lance Stroll, a confusion that showed his anger with Fernando
Lawson’s attitude has not helped him at all, and now he faces one of the toughest moments of his short career. We will see if his last chance with Racing Bulls allows him to become the driver that is expected of him.