F1 News: Liam Lawson Found Out He Lost Red Bull Seat At Worst Time
Red Bull reserve driver Liam Lawson will continue to serve his reserve driver duties after receiving a brief opportunity to race for sister team AlphaTauri. While he expressed his eagerness to wait for a full-time seat with Red Bull, he also spoke of his frustration for not getting a seat next year.
AlphaTauri recently extended the contracts of both its drivers- Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo, leaving no spot for Lawson to race full-time. He will continue to remain on the sidelines next year, despite an excellent show of performance in the five Grands Prix in recent months.
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Lawson replaced Ricciardo after the latter went through surgery for an injury caused to him during the Dutch GP weekend. Now that the 21-year-old driver tasted the performance of an F1 car, he reveals that it is frustrating to be left without a seat for 2024.
Appearing on the Beyond the Grid podcast, Lawson spoke about the lack of opportunity that was frustrating him, and his plans for the future. When asked what he planned to do next season, he said laughingly:
“I can’t do any of the free practice sessions anymore.
"I don’t know truthfully, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll get to drive again and, if there is, I don’t know when it’ll be.
"Right now, because I’ve kind of raced in most championships, even been in F1, I can’t really go to do F2 again, there’d be no point.
"I can’t do Super Formula again. I could, but there’s less benefit from doing it. So I think it’s full focus on being reserve. That means a lot of simulator, which, for me, I think what helped getting into Formula 1 and adjusting to it so quickly has been [due to] two years now nearly as reserve.
"So I’ve done lots of simulator work over the last couple of years. That will just continue now into next year, and getting to learn and basically absorb, being alongside the best team in F1 right now – I get to sit through all the meetings and learn how they operate.”
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The Mantra To Deal With Frustration
Lawson missed out on the 2023 seat to Nyck de Vries toward the end of last year, which was then taken over by Ricciardo this year. Being left on the sidelines on two occasions, the New Zealander revealed that he was able to deal with the frustration through logic. He continued:
“I think that’s what’s potentially helped through each scenario.
"Yes, it’s extremely frustrating but I’ve been able to sit there and go, ‘I can understand, at the time of this decision, why this makes sense’.
"That goes back to De Vries last year. At that point, we were having a shocking F2 season. We turned it around at the end. But it was all too late and we had a really good end to the season, I had good testing in F1 but, by then, the decision was made so that’s frustrating.
"But, at the time that the decision was made, I could sit there and understand why, just because of how my season was. Then this year as well, although I’m having a much better season, you have the option mid-season, in a team that’s struggling quite a bit with the car, you have the option of somebody who’s never been in Formula 1 to jump in midseason or somebody who’s very experienced in F1 and has won races.
"Again, it’s frustrating to take but I can sit there and go, ‘OK, I can make sense of this decision and understand it’.
"I would say it’s frustrating to not be driving next year, but I will continue to make the most of still being in F1, involved at least. I’m a Red Bull driver. If I ever get a chance in F1, it’ll be through Red Bull Racing and, most likely at some point, I don’t know honestly, but I think it would be with Red Bull that they give me my shot.”
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Despite scoring points in Singapore, Lawson revealed that he knew before the Singapore GP that he wasn't going to get next year's seat, long before it was announced to the media. He concluded:
“Yes, it was a really good feeling knowing that, potentially I’d made a big step in trying to achieve [a full-time seat].
"But I also knew before Singapore that I wasn’t driving next year, I knew that basically, I wasn’t gonna get the seat. I found out before qualifying, the timing wasn’t great.
"It was tough because the media and everybody didn’t know. So we had a good qualifying and the media was really positive and basically saying all these great things about what chances I have of driving next year, but I knew I wasn’t. I think it was a similar feeling after the race. I knew that I wasn’t going to be in next year, so it definitely took away from what it would have felt like.”
