Liam Lawson retires after an accident on his Red Bull debut in Melbourne: Team principal Christian Horner does not blame the New Zealander for this though
In the end, Liam Lawson was only ten laps short of finishing his debut race for Red Bull in Australia: But it didn’t work out that way. On a rain-soaked track, he crashed in tenth place in turn two – exactly at the spot where his Racing Bulls successor Isack Hadjar had also spun off the track on the warm-up lap.
For Red Bull consultant Helmut Marko, the difficulties of the rookies in the extremely difficult conditions in Albert Park are no surprise: “With the juniors, except for Antonelli, everyone made a mistake. You can see that in such weather and conditions, you need a certain routine,” the Austrian commented soberly on the performance of the youngsters on ORF.
However, Lawson is under particular pressure in 2025, as the New Zealander has been promoted to the Red Bull A-team because the many accidents and poor performances of Sergio Perez have become too much for those in charge – against this background, it is a bitter debut in the new team for the 23-year-old, who is thus seamlessly joining the ranks of the Mexican’s escapades.
Lawson: “Then it started raining harder than expected”
Team boss Christian Horner is nevertheless keen to protect his new number two after the disappointing performance: “It was a challenging weekend for him. We changed the car and gave him a little more downforce, but overtaking is extremely difficult at this track,” explains Horner, referring to Lawson.
In qualifying, he had not made it past 18th place after some difficulties in training. The team therefore made a virtue out of necessity, made the aforementioned modifications, such as a new rear wing, and sent Lawson into the race from the pit lane. However, the plan only partially worked, as the New Zealander reported after the race:
“We were hoping for a predominantly wet race. But it dried faster than we had expected.” The result: ”In the first stint, we had big problems with the front tires overheating. Towards the end, it dried up further, so we switched to slicks. The pace on the slicks was okay for a few laps, but then it started raining harder than expected,“ explains Lawson.
”At first, we thought it would only be wet in sector three and that we could get through on the rest of the track. But then it rained everywhere – and I couldn’t keep the car on the track,” says the Kiwi about his crash on lap 47, when, it should be noted, he was still on slicks.
Horner therefore defends Lawson: ”We took the risk of keeping him out for a long time because he was out of the points anyway. We thought, ‘Why not? Let’s roll the dice and see if it pays off.’ But at that very moment it started raining harder,” the team principal blames his strategists instead of the driver: ”So blaming him for the last spin would not be entirely fair.”
Lawson doesn’t want to hide behind his boss’s statements either: “We agreed and wanted to take the risk, it was a joint decision,” he says: “In the end, I could only apologize for my accident.”
Horner warns “resilient” Lawson ahead of China
At least: He has learned how to deal with such setbacks better over the course of his career, reports Lawson, so despite the difficult first weekend for Red Bull, he is not plagued by self-doubt: “Fortunately, we only have a few days’ break,” says the New Zealander: “I’m just looking forward to the next race now.”
But team principal Horner also warns against too high expectations for Shanghai: “The coming weekend will not be any easier, as it is a sprint race on a track he does not know yet. But he is resilient. This weekend was not representative of what he is really capable of,” believes the Briton, who also points to the one or other impressive lap time set by his driver in dry conditions.
And Lawson himself confirms that not everything was as bad as it might have looked in Australia: “To be honest, I already felt familiar with the car during the test, so it wasn’t a matter of me still having to adapt. It was just a difficult weekend.”
