Liam Lawson is having the best season of his Formula 1 career and still does not know where he will be racing in 2027. That conversation, he says, is about to start.
"Oh, me personally? I actually have no idea," Lawson told PlanetF1.com and other accredited media when asked about his future. "I think that stuff, that conversation is normally around summer break. So I'm sure there'll be discussions around that."
The numbers make his case for him. Lawson has 43 points to rookie team-mate Arvid Lindblad's 23, and failed to score on only three occasions in the first half of the season — a marked change from a 2025 that saw him promoted to the senior Red Bull team and dropped after two race weekends.
Racing Bulls team principal Alan Permane has been unusually direct about it. "Liam has been amazing this year, honestly," Permane said. "We talk a lot about Arvid, and rightly so, but Liam had a very difficult start. [...] He's totally focused, he's still very fast, he takes opportunities when they arise, he doesn't make mistakes and he's doing a fantastic job."
None of which has stopped the rumours, because Red Bull has a 19-year-old problem it cannot ignore. Nikola Tsolov leads the Formula 2 championship with six wins, including the first run of three consecutive F2 victories in the series' history, across the Red Bull Ring and Silverstone rounds. He leads Alpine-backed Gabriele Mini by 20 points, and a top-three finish alone would clear the 40-point Super Licence threshold.
"Those are just rumours," Bayer said. "He's doing a brilliant job and is a huge talent whom we naturally have on our radar. But we've only had seven races so far, and Liam and Arvid are doing just as brilliant a job. So it's not even on the cards at the moment."
Tsolov's own account matches that. Asked what he had been told about 2027, he was blunt about how little he knows.
"Nothing yet, unfortunately," Tsolov told Sky F1. "But it's still early days. I think we need to get through the summer break. I need to keep doing what I'm doing. I have no doubt that if everything goes the same way, I surely would get an opportunity one day."
Sky F1's Anthony Davidson put it to him that Racing Bulls engineers had been impressed after working with him — which turns out to be based on a single day. "I did one day of sim already at the factory," Tsolov said. "That's about all I've done. [...] It felt really good. Felt really natural to drive, to be honest, the car. Coming from F2, everything feels quite easy because you have a lot of downforce. But I'm sure it's much more difficult in real life." Bayer has said a test in a previous-generation car, the step needed before any FP1 outing, is planned for the autumn.
David Coulthard, a Red Bull ambassador, sees the situation differently to those framing it as Lawson versus Tsolov. On the Up To Speed podcast, he suggested Red Bull could simply park its junior somewhere else on the grid rather than force a straight swap.
"It's a good problem to have," Coulthard said. "I guess there's always a possibility, if they're happy with the others, that they could help position him somewhere else. [...] But I think, listen for that name, Nikola Tsolov from Bulgaria. Drives very well. Is a great personality out of the car as well."
The reason nobody can answer the question yet sits one team up. Max Verstappen's Red Bull exit clause could have been triggered after the Hungarian Grand Prix; his second place there left him 60 points short of the runner-up position his contract is understood to require, and he now appears likely to stay without having confirmed anything. Isack Hadjar, meanwhile, is proving the most competitive team-mate Verstappen has had in years.
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*Originally published on [News Formula One](https://newsformula.one/article/lawsons-red-bull-talks-loom-as-tsolov-waits-his-turn). Visit for full coverage.*