How Liam Lawson rose to the challenge of driving this year's Red Bull

What a wild rescue mission. Liam Lawson saw the chequered flag in Zandvoort in seventh place, turning a frantic super sub appearance into a handful of points for Red Bull Racing.

Let me tell you, the Dutch GP weekend was always going to be an uphill battle. Parachuted into the team at the last minute with just a single day in the Milton Keynes simulator, the New Zealander had to tame the Red Bull RB22. Sure, it shares a power unit with the Racing Bulls VCARB 03, but outside of that, every single thing feels different—from the steering and corner balance to the high-speed grip. Benchmark that against Max Verstappen at the four-time World Champion's home race, and add the weight of his aborted two-race stint at Red Bull in 2025, and the pressure cooker was whistling.

Despite the odds, he delivered precisely what was asked of him. With Red Bull having slipped to the back of the top four group at Zandvoort, P7 was about the maximum possible reward. Team Principal Laurent Mekies pointed out that Lawson was only one-tenth away from Max in Qualifying and grabbed all the points available to him pace-wise. After a tricky start that saw him take P6 in SQ1 before slipping to P11 in SQ2 and the Sprint, he steadily built momentum through main Qualifying with progressions through P14, P8, and P8 to line up right behind his teammate.

Sunday's race threw a proper curveball with pre-race rain. Lawson launched cleanly, fighting wheel-to-wheel through the opening corners before Verstappen edged ahead. Then came the drama at the banked final corner: Verstappen lost control and crashed on slick tyres, forcing Lawson to take sharp avoiding action. "Just impossible," Lawson said of the soaked final corners. "I really lifted out of it... because honestly, I had no confidence in how much grip I was going to have there."

From there, Lawson inherited the restart in P7 and parked it in a lonely no-man’s land between the leading six cars and the chasing midfield. Even a 10-second penalty for a yellow flag infringement couldn't touch his final position. It was clean, pragmatic, and remarkably composed for a driver who spent only a single Friday FP1 session getting up to speed before facing a full Sprint weekend.