Liam Lawson arrives at this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix tenth in the championship with 39 points — already more than he managed across the whole of last season. The number matters because of where the story starts. Eighteen months ago, two races into a Red Bull seat alongside Max Verstappen, he was dropped.
Racing Bulls team principal Alan Permane has now spelled out what came back to the team. Speaking on F1's Beyond The Grid podcast, Permane said the driver who returned to the sister squad was not the one who had left it.
"He didn't really say much about it to start with, honestly, his head was down," Permane said. "We obviously knew him from the year before, we could tell he certainly wasn't the same guy, and I don't want to say we rebuilt him because that's a little bit dramatic, but we just supported and helped him where we could."
Red Bull's decision had been brutal in its speed. Lawson crashed in Australia and qualified last for both the sprint and the Grand Prix in China before the team sent him back down. Christian Horner conceded at the time that Red Bull had "asked too much of him too soon." Lawson himself admitted he was "surprised" by how quickly the call was made, and said he had not been given the time to prove himself.
Permane's remedy was narrow and deliberate: block out everything that wasn't the driving. "What I said to him last year was, 'forget anything outside of this'... there's nothing that should be more important than this, don't worry about this flight or that flight, or this hotel," he said. "You can see that with him this year. He's laser-focused, it's a bit of a cliché, but he is, and I'm really pleased that you can see that in his driving."
The team boss went further, placing Lawson in unusually elevated company. He argued the very best drivers don't have a fixed driving style at all. "I don't think Fernando [Alonso] has a driving style, I don't think Max [Verstappen] has a driving style. I think they just drive the car however it needs to be driven to go quickest," Permane said. "I think Liam is doing a little bit of that this year, he's figuring out how to drive these cars."
Outlets tracking Lawson's season have reached the same verdict from the outside. Motorsport Week framed the "embarrassing" demotion as the very thing that fuelled his 2026 fightback, while PlanetF1 called the Red Bull exit "borderline embarrassing" before pointing to where he sits now.
There is a practical lift coming, too. Team-mate Arvid Lindblad ran an upgrade at Spa and finished ninth; Lawson was off the pace and out of the points for the first time in six races in twelfth. He gets the upgraded chassis at the Hungaroring, where Racing Bulls arrive locked with Alpine on 61 points in a midfield fight that could define both teams' seasons before the summer break.
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*Originally published on [News Formula One](https://newsformula.one/article/permane-lawson-wasnt-the-same-guy-after-red-bull-demotion). Visit for full coverage.*