Can Lawson keep seat for 2027 season? – F1 Q&AImage source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson is ninth in the drivers’ championship Published10 minutes agoFormula 1 cars will be back on track next week when the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort takes place from 21-23 August.In the meantime, you can get your F1 fix as our correspondent Andrew Benson answers your newest questions.As a Kiwi, I’m biased – but clearly Liam Lawson’s been performing at Racing Bulls so far this year, and he’s currently ‘best of the rest’ in the driver standings. Thoughts on his future in F1, particularly before the 2027 season? – IsabellaLawson is having a strong season.Given the Racing Bulls have the fifth quickest car on average this season, and Lawson is considerably the more experienced of their two drivers, ‘best of the rest’ in the championship behind the drivers from the top four teams is exactly where he should be.However, Lawson’s issue – in terms of prolonging his career in F1 – is recent history, and his current team-mate.Arvid Lindblad is a rookie this year, but he is already proving pretty much a match for Lawson. As team principal Alan Permane puts it, the team have “two quick guys” who are “incredibly close” in performance.Lindblad is trailing in the championship by 20 points, yes, but on pure pace there is little to choose between them.Lawson leads the qualifying head-to-head 6-5 at races where a fair comparison can be made but, on average speed, Lindblad is actually slightly ahead – by 0.017secs.That’s impressive for a rookie in this context.Equally, Isack Hadjar was more impressive than Lawson in 2025 – hence Red Bull’s decision to promote him in favour of Yuki Tsunoda for this season.In terms of whether he is a candidate for a move up the grid, Lawson will not find it easy to recover his reputation from the two poor races he had alongside Max Verstappen at the start of 2025, after which Red Bull took the decision to demote him back to Racing Bulls and swap him with Tsunoda.
Once there, Lawson was pretty comfortably beaten by Hadjar.
As for this season and the future, Permane points out the goal of him and his team is to “develop drivers” for Red Bull.
If Red Bull were still run by the old regime of Helmut Marko and Christian Horner, there would be no hope of Lawson getting another chance in the senior team.
The modus operandi of the new leadership, of Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies and soon-to-be head of the young driver programme Gwen Lagrue, and how they view Lawson in all this context, remains to be seen.
