Why Lawson won't really settle for being Verstappen's number two
When Red Bull decided who to pass Formula 1’s poisoned chalice to for 2025, one factor outweighed all others in selecting Liam Lawson as Max Verstappen’s teammate. Performance mattered, but more im…
When Red Bull decided who to pass Formula 1’s poisoned chalice to for 2025, one factor outweighed all others in selecting Liam Lawson as Max Verstappen’s teammate. Performance mattered, but more important was the robust mindset required to thrive where his predecessors have failed. It’s a logical criterion to prioritize, but one potentially leading to other problems given the mentality intrinsic to any successful racing driver.
It’s an exaggeration to say Verstappen is a career-killer given Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon rose again in F1, albeit to diminished heights, while Sergio Perez is licking his wounds ahead of a possible return in 2026, but they all sustained heavy damage from sharing a garage with him. Racing history is full of capable drivers made to look third-rate by direct comparison to an all-time great, but Red Bull believes – or perhaps more accurately, hopes – Lawson has what it takes to avoid that fate. The New Zealander, at 22 and with just 11 grand prix starts sprinkled across two seasons under his belt, is seen as sufficiently broad-shouldered to carry the weight of what has become an impossible assignment.
The question of an athlete’s mindset is much discussed and widely recognized as a vital component of their sporting make-up, yet it’s also poorly defined and tricky to analyze and test except through trial by fire in competition. Lawson has proved he is confident, carrying himself with an arrogant swagger typical of many top-level grand prix drivers both inside and outside of the car. His CV is light on titles – the 2019 Toyota Racing Series is his most illustrious championship win in cars – but includes wins at all levels. Often, he starts strongly, which supports the notion he’s never overawed by a step up. However, there is a suspicion his progression then plateaus.
Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko has set an unambiguous target for Lawson, who “should be within three-tenths of Max in both qualifying and the race”, along with contributing the points needed to win the constructors’ championship and the expectation “he should also steadily increase his performance – if possible”. These are broadly the same set of objectives Gasly, Albon and Perez failed to achieve, for while Perez contributed to constructors’ titles in 2022 and ’23, those were in seasons where Red Bull had a significant performance advantage. When it was close in ’21 and ’24, he cost it. Lawson’s challenge is to avoid being a weak link.
Marko also claims Lawson’s “mental strength tipped the scales”. While he and Red Bull team principal Christian Horner aren’t always on the same page when it comes to the decision-making process, they are aligned here.
“What has really stood out with him has been his attitude and his ability to deal with pressure”, says Horner. “All the rookies looked a little bit like rookies in Brazil [in the wet]. Liam didn’t drop the car, he didn’t make any mistakes. He’s looked a seasoned campaigner. If you look at his performances, he’s agile as well. We put him in a DTM car for a year alongside Alex Albon; he was very quick. He races hard, and he’s got broad shoulders. You need that to be in that seat.
“Liam has got the right character to be able to cope with the pressure of being Max’s teammate and the expectations on him are very clear. We’re not expecting him to beat Max, Max is a generational talent. The objective is to get as close as he can and bag as many points as he can, so that we don’t have a 285-point deficit between the cars.”
Red Bull’s leadership insists that it’s not blind to the risks of pairing the relatively unseasoned Lawson with Verstappen, but believes the Kiwi’s mental strength will help him succeed where others struggled. Andrew Ferraro/Motorsport Images
This sounds promising and it’s conceivable Lawson could settle into this role comfortably, becoming Eddie Irvine to Verstappen’s Michael Schumacher. When Irvine signed up to be Schumacher’s teammate, he knew it was as number two and very publicly embraced it, ending his four-year stint at Maranello with a quartet of grand prix wins and an unsuccessful tilt at the world championship in ’99. But Irvine is a rarity; more often the psychology is that of the usurper – doubly so since the ‘master and apprentice’ approach that once held sway in grand prix racing faded away decades ago.
Lawson will say all the right things and head into a tough season with his eyes open. Intellectually, he will embrace the mission of being Verstappen’s wing man, but he will be conflicted. Racing drivers, at least the ones who make it to this level on merit, are competitive beasts usually with the utter conviction they can beat anyone. Their careers are built upon the expectation they will get in the car and be faster, better, more successful than every driver they face. The conviction can be whittled away at by time for world-weary campaigners, but not someone of Lawson’s age. There’s no doubt that his mentality won’t just be of being a good number two – deep down, he will believe he can depose Verstappen.
Lawson is an abrasive competitor and in his six 2024 outings earned himself a reputation for being a tough rival in wheel-to-wheel combat. While happenstance meant he often crossed paths with Perez, there’s no question he knew the significance of battles with the driver he was in contention to replace. Rather than being cowed by this, he backed himself and wasn’t afraid of risking irritating his paymasters by showing that this was his time. Marko, in particular, will have loved this approach.
Verstappen is a completely different proposition to Perez, but Lawson will see him as just another skittle to be knocked down in his career progression. The most effective number two drivers are usually those who don’t know – or rather haven’t accepted –this is their lot in life. Valtteri Bottas exemplified this at Mercedes, coming back every year determined to barge Lewis Hamilton out of his team leader role and repeatedly failing. Ideally, you want a driver who can keep dusting themselves down and get back up again because they will get the best from themselves and keep their teammate on their toes. But this can’t last forever and eventually such resolve is eroded.
The effect could be delayed for Lawson given he perhaps can hark back to the old days of learning from a star driver thanks to Verstappen being courted by rival teams ahead of a possible move away from Red Bull. Were that to happen for ’26 then Lawson can satisfy himself by being close enough this year to be seen as a credible team leader in the future. However, that’s a narrow set of circumstances, contingent on factors outside of his control.
Every empire falls. Great drivers appear to be all-powerful entities who will eternally prevail, until suddenly one day they are not. They survive assault from countless rivals but eventually, for whatever reason, will be deposed. Lawson must believe he can be that agent of change because that comes with the territory of his strong mindset, which will be founded upon the certainty he can be better than anyone.
Objectively, this is hugely ambitious and there’s no reason to believe Lawson can pull it off. In fact, the evidence of his career points to a driver who is good rather than great – meaning he has the ability to have a long and accomplished grand prix career, but not a Verstappen-beating one. However, the mentality of drivers is not, and in many ways cannot, be so objective in terms of putting a ceiling on their potential. If they did, would any ever set foot on the path to F1, given the ludicrously long odds of making it?
Verstappen’s reign will end at some point. Lawson will be privately backing himself to speed that process along. Red Bull Content Pool
Let’s say Lawson does do better than that three-tenths deficit and somehow starts pushing Verstappen, then he will be minded to move in for the kill. This means all the qualities that have helped him get there could become a problem for Red Bull – the killer instinct, the self-confidence, the robust mentality. Unlikely as it is, it’s not entirely impossible.
The corollary is he experiences what almost every driver does eventually – the psychological battering of being directly compared to someone emphatically better than you. Therefore, Red Bull needs Lawson to thread the needle – he needs to be close enough to contribute without being a problem but not fall into confusion and despondency. Verstappen teammates have a habit of getting lost, and if that happens it’s a difficult wilderness to find your way out of. The downside of a rock-solid mentality is, if you are destabilized, you can fall far and quickly.
Red Bull has decided Lawson is the best candidate for the job, or at least from among its existing stable. You could argue it’s making the same old mistake by swinging back to promoting an inexperienced young driver, running a risk of a repeat of the failure of Gasly and Albon. Horner is wise enough to accept there’s a risk of this, but again argues Lawson is different.
“The danger is there’s a repeat of that, but Liam is a different character,” says Horner. “He’s a different personality, able to deal with the pressure. He’s shown a real resilience and strength of character with the opportunity that’s been provided. And he drives the car in a similar fashion to Max, he doesn’t shy away from having a very positive front end in the car. So in terms of driving characteristics, it will be easier for the cars to run more closely together in set-up.”
Horner’s point about driving style is important as too often its number twos have become lost in set-up experiments. A driver’s tolerances define how you can develop and run a car and Verstappen, like Schumacher, likes a pointy car on turn-in. The fastest car theoretically will always have that instability on turn-in but requires the driver to have a very precise feel and ability to proactively control the rear.
Verstappen was confounded at times last year when limited by understeer because it imposed an easier-to-access but lower limit of the car. However, the question is whether Lawson really can match that style. He does like to push the rotation in the entries and therefore a rear end with a degree of instability, but he must avoid falling into the trap of trying to achieve that with late braking. Gasly suffered from that, often braking later than Verstappen, suffering from under-rotation as a result, then complaining of a lack of traction in corner exits because he was effectively driving a longer corner.
Lawson will learn plenty from Verstappen, not only in terms of how to be quick but also the art of tire management. It’s unclear just how tough a challenge he will face this season given it remains to be seen how competitive Red Bull is after its 2024 troubles. But one thing is certain – Lawson heads into the new season with absolute confidence and a certainty that he won’t articulate publicly that he can be the one to defeat Verstappen.
Lawson would never have made it this far if he didn’t. But for all of Red Bull’s confidence in him, there’s no way of knowing how he will really respond to what would be a punishing situation for most drivers. His mental strength will never have been tested like this before and given it’s vanishingly unlikely he will be able to deliver on the hopes of usurping F1’s top dog, which would bring its own problems, even Lawson won’t really know how he will stand up to it.
All we can know for sure is that right now, before the reality of the fight sets in, he will be quietly confident that he can turn this difficult opportunity into a career-making one. And that fundamental truth means that if, or more realistically when, he can’t, nobody knows how he will respond.
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