Eighteen months ago Liam Lawson's Formula 1 career looked close to collapse. Promoted alongside Max Verstappen for 2025, he was dropped back to the junior team after just two grands prix. The verdict on that brutal call is now shifting.
"We saw Liam Lawson barely getting his opportunity at the big team, and then he was sent back to RB, and actually, it was probably for the better of his career that he went back there," Sky Sports analyst Naomi Schiff said on the Up To Speed podcast after the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix. "They are regularly in the points. RB really does, to me, feel like they are the best of the rest at the moment."
The numbers back her. Lawson has scored in five of the season's first seven rounds and sits 10th in the drivers' championship with 28 points; Racing Bulls are sixth among the constructors. Schiff sees a driver at ease. "We see them both thriving at the moment in that team," she said. "They're happy drivers. They seem to be able to do their thing in the car, and they've delivered really well this year so far."
It is a long way from where the same Red Bull hierarchy had him. After last November's Sao Paulo Grand Prix, advisor Helmut Marko branded Lawson "inconsistent" while calling junior team-mate Isack Hadjar the "revelation of the season" — with Lawson, in RacingNews365's words, "fighting for his F1 future."
Lawson himself is not getting carried away. The Racing Bulls package has been quick on Saturdays but soft on Sundays, and he is focused on converting one into the other. "If we keep this trend, obviously we had a quick car in qualifying. Hopefully that translates to the rest of the season," he told media including RacingNews365 after Barcelona, where he finished eighth. "I think Barcelona is normally quite a good sign for that, so we just need to sort out the race car."
That race-day shortfall is the live issue, because Racing Bulls are no longer just racing themselves. The team trails Alpine by 16 points in the fight for fifth, the unofficial best-of-the-rest crown behind the big four, with rookie Arvid Lindblad chipping in points alongside Lawson.
The redemption arc isn't complete. Lawson still has to turn qualifying pace into race results, and the Alpine battle will run all year. But for a driver written off after two races, being called the best of the rest — by his own team's pace and by the pundits — is its own kind of vindication.
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*Originally published on [Formula News One](https://newsformula.one/article/why-lawsons-red-bull-demotion-may-have-saved-his-f1-career). Visit for full coverage.*