How Liam Lawson’s junior racing career shows he is ready for Red Bull F1 seat

Liam Lawson is set to start his first full season in Formula 1 this week after being promoted by Red Bull to replace the struggling Sergio Perez.

Lawson performed solidly while deputising for an injured Daniel Ricciardo at AlphaTauri in 2023 and impressed the energy drinks giant again when it hired him to replace Ricciardo at the backend of the 2024 season.

But not everyone is convinced that Lawson deserves to be offered one of the most-coveted seats on the grid - not when he has racked up just 11 starts in F1.

The critics believe that Lawson might struggle to get up to speed at Red Bull and face the same issues that plagued Perez, particularly when the RB20 became hard to drive a fourth of the way into 2024.

Criticism has also been levied on Red Bull’s decision to overlook Yuki Tsunoda, who has grown rapidly as a driver since he made his F1 debut as a fresh-faced 20-year-old in 2021.

But while there is no denying that Lawson is being thrown in at the deep end, against a driver who has the ability to extract maximum performance from a poorly-balanced car, the Kiwi can take encouragement from the fact that he rapidly adapted to new cars and championships on the junior racing ladder prior to his arrival in F1.

Here’s a recap of how Lawson won his debut races in Formula 2, Super Formula, DTM and other championships

Euroformula Open and Toyota Racing Series (2019)

Liam Lawson raced in his homegrown Toyota Racing series in the winter of 2019 to prepare for his primary campaign in Europe.

Driving for the plum M2 Competition team, he outperformed his more experienced teammates Marcus Armstrong and Lucas Auer, amongst others, to win on his debut at Highlands Motorsport Park.

Lawson qualified second on the grid but jumped polesitter Raoul Hyman at the start and then led every lap to start the season in the best possible manner. He also won the third and final race of the Highlands weekend and was crowned champion at the end of the season.

The same year, Lawson also contested the Euroformula Open Series, which at that time was based around the Formula 3-spec Dallara F317 chassis. While he missed out on pole in the opening weekend at Paul Ricard, he took advantage of a safety car restart to grab an early lead. Later in the race, the 16-year-old came under immense pressure from future F1 teammate Tsunoda, but he held firm to take the chequered flag by 1.2s.

Formula 2 (2021)

Lawson moved up to Formula 2 with Hitech in 2021 and immediately made an impression by winning his maiden race in Bahrain.

Having qualified third on the grid, he made a brilliant launch to leapfrog David Beckmann and polesitter Theo Pourchaire and grab the lead of the race.

However, securing the win wasn’t quite as simple as that, as Carlin’s Jehan Daruvala started breathing down his neck and left him with no room for error. Ultimately, Lawson prevailed in the battle between the Red Bull juniors to take victory by 0.9s.

Bahrain would turn out to be Lawson’s only victory of his rookie F2 season, but he returned to the championship in 2022 and added four more wins en route to third in the standings.

DTM (2021)

Lawson had exclusively raced formula cars prior to 2021, but he showed he can be quick behind the wheel of a sportscar too when he joined the new-look DTM series upon its switch to DTM regulations in 2021.

Driving for the AF Corse-run Red Bull team in the opening round at Monza, Lawson made a brilliant start from seventh on the grid to jump to fifth place.

He then made a relatively early stop on lap 9 of 28 and set a series of rapid laps in clean air to undercut his rivals. That meant that as his other cars rejoined the track after completing their mandatory pitstops, Lawson took the lead of the race.

Lawson would go on to fight for the DTM title in his rookie season, but he was ‘robbed’ of the championship in a controversial finale in which his car was badly damaged in a divebomb from rival Kelvin van der Linde. 

Team orders from Mercedes sealed the deal in favour of Maximilian Goetz, leaving Lawson with a sour taste in his mouth about his time in the DTM.

Super Formula (2023)

Red Bull sent Lawson to Japan to assess his talent in a car that is closest to F1 in terms of downforce and overall speed.

And much like in the DTM, the Kiwi again showed he can get quickly up to speed in an unfamiliar environment.

In the opening race at Fuji, Lawson passed TGM driver Toshiki Oyu at the start to place himself directly behind teammate and race leader Tomoki Nojiri.

When the pitstop sequence began, Lawson was the first of the leaders to head into the pitlane, and he used the advantage of fresher tyres to charge past Nojiri, who was still getting his own tyres up to temperature.

He went on to become the first driver in the modern history of Japan’s premier single-seater series to win a race on their debut.

In all, Lawson won three out of the eight races in Super Formula that year, but a costly mistake at Motegi ended up costing him the championship.

Bonus: F1 debut at Zandvoort

Lawson was never going to win an F1 race on his debut, but he did a fantastic job after receiving a last-minute call-up to join AlphaTauri at the 2023 Dutch GP.

With Ricciardo breaking his hand in Friday practice, Lawson got just one hour of practice running on Saturday morning to prepare for the weekend.

Although he qualified dead last, he managed to keep it clean in tricky wet conditions on Sunday, even briefly passing the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc on track.

He was eventually classified 13th after picking up a 10-second penalty for impeding Kevin Magnussen in the pitlane.