Liam Lawson has broken his silence on his shocking Red Bull demotion, insisting the team constructed a false narrative around his exit — and that he now simply pretends the whole episode never happened. The New Zealander replaced Sergio Pérez at the senior outfit heading into 2025, only to be dropped back down to Racing Bulls after just two races, with Yuki Tsunoda promoted in his place.
Liam Lawson Red Bull Demotion: ‘That Could Not Be Further From the Truth’
Red Bull framed the decision publicly as a means of relieving pressure on a struggling driver, but Lawson wants no part of that story. Speaking on the High Performance Podcast, he was blunt: “The whole thing was played out to be me being mentally struggling and all this stuff, and like they were doing it to protect me. That honestly just could not be further from what it was actually like.”
Furthermore, Lawson revealed that ahead of his difficult Chinese Grand Prix weekend — a circuit he had never raced at before — the team collectively agreed to attempt a radical car set-up overhaul. “Max wasn’t happy. Everyone was like, ‘This is not working, and we need to try something quite radical here,'” he explained. The Saturday night meeting resulted in a change he described as “a normal change times 10” — a shot in the dark that ultimately backfired. Despite being aware of the long odds, Lawson says the team presented it as a positive step forward. It wasn’t. His demotion landed before the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka.
Rebuilding at Racing Bulls: Lawson’s Form Speaks for Itself
Since returning to Racing Bulls, Lawson has done his talking on track. He has scored points in five of the seven races so far this season, contributing 28 of the team’s 41 points — numbers that tell their own story. “I tried to not let it affect me as much as possible,” he said. “I even pretended it never even happened. I spent two races there, and the way it all went down was just so crazy that I honestly was like, I’m just going to pretend I never even went there.”
Notably, Lawson also pointed to a lack of preparation as a key factor, citing just half a day of testing before the season opener and a compromised Bahrain test. He acknowledges he could have done better across those two races, but the context matters. Meanwhile, Tsunoda himself struggled to consistently match Max Verstappen after stepping up — hardly a ringing endorsement of Red Bull’s decision-making at the time.
It is worth noting that former team principal Christian Horner and racing adviser Helmut Marko, who jointly oversaw driver selections for years, both departed Red Bull at separate points later in the season. Lawson stopped short of naming names, but the implication is hard to miss. One person he did single out for praise, however, was Verstappen himself. “When I went to Red Bull, through all of it, he was very supportive,” Lawson said. High praise from a driver who clearly carries no bitterness towards the reigning world champion — just everyone else who ran the show.