Should Liam Lawson also be worried about his seat at Racing Bulls?

Liam Lawson is not seeing life through rose-tinted glasses at the moment. Formula 1. It's not for lack of having worn the color this weekend to promote the new summer drink of Red Bull at the Miami Grand Prix. No, far from any aesthetic considerations, the New Zealander was still in difficulty at the Florida meeting and leaves the United States with a still blank counter. It must be said that this time, in addition to a lack of performance, the Kiwi was unlucky: Saturday, during the Sprint, Liam Lawson thought he had won his first points of the season by finishing in 7th place... before being caught by the patrol a few hours later, being penalized five seconds for having hit Fernando Alonso.

On Sunday, the Racing Bulls driver was no luckier: caught by Jack Doohan at the first corner, Liam Lawson finally retired after 36 laps, with his VCARB-02 too damaged to hope for anything. "I had a really good start, a wide passage opened up in the first corner. I followed the one in front of me and then I felt a side impact, I don't know what happened. We suffered a lot of damage. We were waiting for rain or something like that, but it never came.", the New Zealander confided after the race in Miami.

After six Grands Prix, the situation is alarming for Liam Lawson. Back at Racing Bulls since the beginning of April, after a quick and unsuccessful stint at Red Bull during the first two rounds of the season, the 23-year-old driver is struggling to convince and has still not scored a single point in 2025. More than the results, it is the dynamic that is bad for the Oceanian, who has not managed to finish ahead of Isack Hadjar in qualifying (3-1 in favor of the Frenchman, only beaten in Jeddah) or in the race (5 points for Hadjar, 0 for Lawson). The New Zealander is however more experienced than his French teammate in F1 (17 Grands Prix against 5 for Hadjar), but since his return to Faenza, the performances are not there.

Lawson under threat from Lindblad?

Liam Lawson himself draws a rather fatalistic conclusion from his performance in his last four Grands Prix. “Most [of the race weekends] have been pretty shocking, recognizes the Kiwi. As far as 'comfort' goes, I feel really good in the car, the pace has been pretty good most of the time. Unfortunately, there are no results. We don't have any points. There are a lot of variables in our sport and it can be difficult to put everything together in a race. The speed has been there most of the time but unfortunately, it hasn't worked for us so far."

Demoted to Racing Bulls to regain his confidence and continue learning in Formula 1, Liam Lawson is struggling to regain his brilliance, the one that convinced Red Bull to make him a regular at the parent team at the end of 2024. Faced with Isack Hadjar, who is asserting himself by the week, the Hastings native is losing credibility with each poor performance. And when we know the legendary patience of Helmut Marko's gang, we can only worry about Liam Lawson's future in Formula 1.

Especially since behind, a little prodigy begins to spread its wings in Formula 2 : Arvid Lindblad, 17, winner of the Sprint race in Saudi Arabia and already holder of the Super Licence. The Briton is expected to take part in several Free Practice sessions this season with Racing Bulls, he will turn 18 on August 8th – in the middle of the summer break – and who will therefore be able to apply for a Formula 1 seat this summer. Considering the performances of Andrea Kimi Antonelli at the start of the season – he who only did one season in F2 before being appointed by Mercedes – we think that Red Bull might be inspired to do the same thing with its protégé. Liam Lawson will have to start performing quickly to save his skin…

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