Racing Bulls make Liam Lawson 'genius' declaration

Racing Bulls team principal Alan Permane has said he sees "some genius" in Liam Lawson whilst reflecting on the New Zealander's 2025 F1 season.

The 23-year-old endured a torrid start to the campaign, finding himself unceremoniously demoted from Red Bull just two rounds into the year, after struggling to adapt to the difficult RB21.

After a disjointed start to life in F1, coming into replace Daniel Ricciardo in both 2023 and 2024, the move up to the Milton Keynes-based squad was supposed to provide Lawson with the benefits of an offseason.

However, his early switch with Yuki Tsunoda robbed him of any advantages that come with being in the cockpit during testing and becoming embedded within a team over the winter.

On the back foot, it took Lawson numerous rounds to find the level new team-mate Isack Hadjar was operating at.

However, once he did, in Monaco, he was able to match the Frenchman, who will partner Max Verstappen at Red Bull in 2026, much more closely.

From that point onwards, Lawson was outscored by Hadjar across the final 16 rounds of the campaign by just two points, with some standout performances punctuating his usual consistency.

It may have saved his F1 career. Whilst Tsunoda, meanwhile, will spend next year on the sidelines as Red Bull reserve driver, Lawson will be joined by rookie Arvid Lindblad in the second team.

He was evidently able to impress Permane and Racing Bulls enough for the Faenza-based squad to advocate on his behalf when it came to Red Bull making the final call.

"I really see some genius in there," the team boss told PlanetF1.com before drawing on some of Lawson's high points to illustrate his argument.

"And I think it’s down to all of us, himself included, to try and figure out, when it goes very, very well, and it does go very, very well a lot of times – you have exceptional races in Austria, in Budapest, that qualifying and race in Baku – just what’s clicking then? And let’s do that across the whole season."

Lawson is a 'huge talent'

If the round in Monaco was the first time Lawson was able to match Hadjar, the following event saw him outperform his team-mate for the first time all year.

He finished sixth, which was then his best result in F1. It set him up for a strong run-up to the summer break. However, according to Permane, it was not a case of something simply falling into place at the Red Bull Ring.

"I think it’s more than that," he explained. "He and his race engineer spent a long time in the simulator, playing with front suspension geometries and steering geometries.

“There were bits he wasn’t happy with, and bits he wasn’t super comfortable with the car. They found something which we actually had on the car in Monaco, and he had a good weekend in Monaco, very decent weekend.

"But then we carried it over to Austria, and he was super happy with the car there."

At the time, Lawson insisted that the weekend in Spielberg was not a turning point for him, but Permane sees the situation a little differently.

"That was a turning point," the Briton stated. "It was something that we did to the car, but at his direction, so he led that, or he and his race engineer led that. It made him much more comfortable with the car."

There were low points, too, like his calamitous round in Singapore, when he found the wall multiple times across the weekend at the Marina Bay Street Circuit.

That came directly after the best weekend of Lawson's career so far, at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. In tricky qualifying conditions, he put his VCARB 02 third on the grid. In the race, he held on for fifth place, ahead of Tsunoda in the Red Bull.

"Liam is a huge talent," Permane added. "As much as we talk about Isack a lot, we can see in the two most difficult qualifying sessions we’ve had this year is Las Vegas and Baku both, low downforce, both a little bit damp, or Vegas very, very damp, but Baku maybe even more difficult than Vegas because it was dry tyres, but a slippery track, and Liam's nailed it both times.

"He’s absolutely got the talent. There’s definitely areas where he can improve, there’s no doubt about that, and he’s working hard on that, and we will work hard on him with that."