Liam Lawson reveals 'main problem' with brutal Red Bull demotion

Liam Lawson has explained a major problem he endured with his demotion back to Racing Bulls - his comfort in the car.

Lawson was promoted to the senior Red Bull team to replace Sergio Perez, but lasted just the Australian and Chinese Grands Prix before Yuki Tsunoda was swapped for him - despite the fact that Lawson had never driven at either Albert Park or Shanghai in F1.

Since then, the New Zealander has enjoyed a strong run of form after the Austrian GP, securing a career-best fifth in Azerbaijan, after taking another career-high with third on the Baku grid.

Lawson is just nine points behind team-mate Isack Hadjar, who has been tipped for promotion to replace the struggling Tsunoda as Max Verstappen's 2026 team-mate, as he detailed the time it took to adjust to the VCARB-02 machine from the RB21 he started the season driving.

"The timing was not the best, the car needed a quite different approach to driving, and I had to readapt," Lawson told Automoto. 

"Since then, we have also made some changes to make me more comfortable, over the course of a few races. Obviously, the ideal situation would be to do all this before the start of the season, but I think it's a process that helped me feel more comfortable in the last races.

"The main problem concerns all those small aspects that make you comfortable with the car, and that you take care of before the season starts.

"These are elements that concern the preferences of the driver in particular, beyond getting used to the car and making the most of it. All this, unfortunately, I had to do during the race weekends.

"Laurent [Mekies] was a great help to me from the first call I had with him to prepare for Japan. He was great with me. 

"He understands drivers very well and establishes a personal relationship with them. He cares a lot and worries about everything we go through during a season, even on a personal level. 

"He notices everything and takes time to understand and try to help us"