The Austrian team's director highlights the New Zealander's evolution in his three races as Hadjar's substitute. He underlines his calmness, his focus on the essentials and the points scored in Zandvoort and Madrid, far from his inconsistent first stint in 2025.
Laurent Mekies has not held back on praise for Liam Lawson. The Red Bull director has very positively valued the New Zealand driver's performance during his second stint with the Austrian team, where he has substituted for the injured Isack Hadjar in the last three races. Lawson, who already had a brief spell at Red Bull at the start of 2025 with disappointing results, has this time shown a maturity and an adaptability that have pleasantly surprised the team's leadership.
"I think he's done a very good job. I think we all know how difficult it is to jump into a different team, into a different car, and I think he has done it as well as we could have expected" declared Mekies after the Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid. The New Zealander finished sixth at Madring, scoring valuable points for the team and confirming the good feelings he had already left in Zandvoort, where he finished seventh.
The contrast with his first experience at Red Bull is notable. At the beginning of 2025, Lawson only contested two weekends with the main team before being sent back to Racing Bulls. In those races he qualified eighteenth, twentieth and failed to score points either in Australia or China, far from the performance of his then teammate Max Verstappen. That stint was a hard blow for a driver who aspired to establish himself in the elite.
However, this second opportunity has been very different. In Zandvoort, his first race as Hadjar's substitute, Lawson qualified eighth and finished seventh, in Madrid he repeated the eighth position in qualifying and improved his race result with a sixth place. Only in Monza, where he was forced to fit a new power unit and start from the back of the grid, was his performance compromised by circumstances beyond his driving.
Mekies highlighted Lawson's ability to stay calm and focus on the essentials: "I think he has continued to grow as a driver and he is very calm in the car, he is very focused. He has certainly managed to keep things simple in the way he interacts with the team and in how he approaches his own performance and the car's, he focuses on the essentials, tries to do the basics well and it is working for him" explained the Red Bull director.
The French executive also stressed the importance of accumulated experience: "With more time in the car, you can reach another degree of finesse perhaps, but I think that approach is very, very solid" he added. Lawson, who turned 24 this year, has shown that he has learned from his mistakes and that he is ready to take advantage of the opportunities that come his way.
Lawson's future at Red Bull remains uncertain. Hadjar continues to recover from the wrist injury he suffered during the summer break and there is no confirmed date for his return. If the Frenchman is not ready for Baku, Lawson will have a fourth opportunity to prove his worth. His performance in recent races has been convincing and Mekies has made it clear that the team is satisfied with his work.
The decision on Red Bull's lineup for the upcoming races will depend on Hadjar's evolution, but Lawson has done everything possible to deserve another opportunity.
