Lawson's strong Red Bull return at Zandvoort may have rescued his F1 career

Liam Lawson’s stand-in appearance for Red Bull at the Dutch Grand Prix may have been the performance that kept his Formula 1 career alive, according to former F1 broadcaster Will Buxton. The New Zealander stepped into the Milton Keynes car at Zandvoort after regular driver Isack Hadjar was ruled out with a wrist injury sustained during the summer break, with Yuki Tsunoda filling Lawson’s vacated Racing Bulls seat.

The stakes could hardly have been higher. Lawson had been dropped by Red Bull after just two race weekends in 2025, making his return to the team a high-wire act in front of the entire paddock.

“I don’t think you can underestimate or undervalue the pressure that would have been on him,” Buxton said on the Up To Speed podcast. “He had turned up and tried everything but had been fired after two races. If he turned up there and qualified at the back of the grid and was nowhere all weekend, that’s pretty much career done.”

Lawson answered his critics emphatically. He qualified eighth — one place behind four-time champion Max Verstappen — and climbed to seventh in the race after Verstappen crashed on the opening lap.

“To turn up and drive the way that he did, to race the way that he did, qualify the way that he did — I was really happy for him,” Buxton continued. “His radio message after the race was very sweet and there was a lot of honesty in that. It was a weekend of catharsis to put all that horrible experience behind him and move on and show the world and show Red Bull, ‘Look at what you could have had.’ It was nice.”

The performance will do little to resolve the longer-term question of Lawson’s place in the Red Bull programme once Hadjar returns from injury, but it at least demonstrated that the 23-year-old retains the pace and composure to compete at the front of the grid when given the opportunity.