Max Verstappen has offered his thoughts on his upcoming partnership with Red Bull Racing teammate Liam Lawson heading into the 2025 season.
Max Verstappen has offered his thoughts on his upcoming partnership with Red Bull Racing teammate Liam Lawson heading into the 2025 season.
Liam Lawson expects a difficult start to his first full season as a Formula 1 driver as he has never raced at some of the first tracks the series will visit.
Red Bull has promoted Lawson to be Max Verstappen’s new team mate after just 11 grand prix appearances. The team won nine grands prix last year but Lawson says he is unlikely to start the season challenging for victories.
“Coming into Formula 1, the goal was to do a good job to obviously move up to the main team, and I’ve been lucky enough to do that so obviously I’m a step closer to that goal,” he said. “But obviously I’ve still [got] a lot to achieve before something like that happens.
“Going into a year like this, especially the start of the season, I’m going to a lot of tracks I haven’t done before. It’s a new team and I think big expectations so it’s very exciting but I’m also expecting it to be the toughest year that I’ve come into.”
Lawson has driven for Red Bull’s second team in the second half of the last two seasons. Of the tracks F1 will visit early in the season, Lawson has only previously visited them in junior categories, if at all. Melbourne, Shanghai and Montreal are among those which will be new to him.
“I’m very excited for Melbourne and I’m very excited for the start of the year,” he said. “There’s a lot of cool tracks that I haven’t done that I think I will enjoy, like Melbourne. China looks like a cool track, Canada is somewhere I’ve always wanted to drive.
“But I think the start of the year is going to be the hardest as well. Going to a bunch of tracks I haven’t done before starting the season, it’s going to be very, very tough.
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“I’ve only ever finished a season, I’ve never really completed one. So I think the start of the year is going to be the hardest. But I would say I’m also most excited to go to these new tracks.”
Going up against four-times world champion Verstappen in the same cars will be “extremely challenging”, Lawson predicts.
“But at the same time, there’s more opportunity than ever [having] someone like him as a team mate, somebody who’s been in this team for 10 years and obviously he’s just won the last four world championships,” he added. “There’s nobody better to align everything that I’m doing with because all of our data is going to be shared.
“For me, that’s a great opportunity to learn. There’s nobody better to learn, to improve [with]. So that’s exciting.
“But obviously at the same time, having somebody so quick and competitive is going to come with its challenges. So for me, it’s just about making the most of that.”
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For Liam Lawson, his goal in his first Formula 1 season at Red Bull Racing is clear, as he will look to score enough points to help the Austrian team and Max Verstappen to fight for the constructors’ championship, with former F1 driver Anthony Davidson agreeing on that point.
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Christian Klien believes Red Bull Racing have learnt from their past mistakes, and as a result, they will put less pressure on Liam Lawson in his first year with the Austrian team. The former Formula 1 driver stresses that Lawson’s main concern is to learn from Max Verstappen and not focus so much on the idea of being able to beat the four-time world champion.
Red Bull have learned from past mistakes not to put too much pressure on rookies, their former driver Christian Klien believes.
Liam Lawson will start his first full season as a Formula 1 driver this year at Red Bull. He will go up against four-times world champion Max Verstappen, who has overwhelmingly beaten each of his last three team mates: Pierre Gasly, Alexander Albon and Sergio Perez.
Klien, who raced for Red Bull during their first season in F1, said Red Bull had no choice but to replace Perez. “For me, it was quite clear they had to change something,” he told The Business of Winning. “Checo just unfortunately didn’t deliver anymore.
“He had a great time at Red Bull Racing, but the last one-and-a-half years, it just didn’t click anymore. Mentally I think it was a difficult situation for him so they had to change something.”
Red Bull passed over their more experienced junior driver Yuki Tsunoda, who enters his fifth season in F1 this year, to promote 23-year-old Lawson, who has only started 11 grands prix. However Klien, who was 21 at the time of his F1 debut, said he “can understand” Red Bull’s decision.
He said Lawson must expect to play second fiddle to Verstappen in his first year in F1. “For Liam, if you get this opportunity, you have to grab it with with both hands. Everybody’s dream is to drive in a top team and a top car. The difficulty is you’re driving next to Max Verstappen.
“That’s now down to him. I think he has the talent, he is a really quick driver, he showed this. He can adapt very quickly. I think he is also mentally strong. But he has to go at this in a very clever way, I think.
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“He shouldn’t go into Red Bull Racing and think ‘I can beat Max Verstappen’ because I don’t think early on in his career that’s possible. He has to be a great number two driver, let’s say, now, learn from the best that Max Verstappen is at the moment and his time can come in the future. So again, it’s really exciting to see this year how he will handle the situation and how Red Bull Racing as a team helps him in this role next to Max Verstappen.”
Klien believes Red Bull have expected too much from their junior drivers in the past, including Daniil Kvyat, who they dropped early in 2016 to make way for Verstappen.
“I hope they don’t put too much pressure [on] him,” said Klien. “They made the mistake with Kvyat, with Albon, et cetera. I think they learned from it.
“What they need is a second driver who scores points and they can go for the constructors’ championship again.”
When Klien drove for Red Bull in 2005, the team took the unusual decision to rotate one of their seats between him and Vitantonio Liuzzi. Klien said Red Bull’s motorsport consultant Helmut Marko later accepted this had been an error.
“It made it very difficult,” said Klien. “Tonio and myself were sharing the car not only in the first couple of races, but also in testing. So we had half of the running off of David Coulthard, for example.
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“But that was a decision that was made by Helmut Marko and we made the best out of it in the end. Luckily later on I got promoted to do the rest of the season, which was crucial not only for myself but also for the team, because you cannot have three drivers in two cars, it just [doesn’t] work.
“I [was] quite happy to hear Helmut Marko a couple of years back, he came up to me and said Christian, I think that was quite a mistake that I did there, that you guys shared the car. So I’m happy that he realised it.”
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