F1 News: Star blasts 'unacceptable' Red Bull after driver sacking

Max Verstappen, Liam Lawson, Red Bull, Racing Bulls, Monaco, 2025 — Photo: © IMAGO

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F1 star blasts 'unacceptable' Red Bull after driver sacking

Red Bull have become synonymous with somewhat premature F1 driver swaps in recent seasons

Kerry Violet F1 News Editor

F1 editor and journalist covering motorsport since 2024.

Wednesday 24 June 2026 08:59 Updated: 10:18

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A harshly judged Formula 1 driver has set the record straight over a brutal seat swap at Red Bull, maintaining that he felt unfairly dropped from his seat with the energy drink giants.

Since Red Bull opted to drop Sergio Perez from their ranks ahead of the 2025 campaign, three different drivers have taken up the second seat alongside four-time champion Max Verstappen.

Isack Hadjar has taken on the challenge of being the Dutchman's team-mate for 2026 and currently sits two places behind him in P9 of the drivers' championship.

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But before Hadjar, Red Bull tried out two drivers in the second seat within one season, only allowing New Zealander Liam Lawson two race weekends before demoting him to Racing Bulls and handing the full-time opportunity to Yuki Tsunoda.

At the end of the 2025 championship, Tsunoda was dropped and is now without a full-time contract, whereas Lawson has remained at Racing Bulls where he appears to be much more settled.

But the 24-year-old has been ruled out of promotion discussions in the media ever since his brutal driver swap took place last season, something which he feels is unfair considering he only had two races to prove his worth at.

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Lawson refuses to accept unfair Red Bull F1 judgement

In an appearance on the High Performance podcast, Lawson told the story of how he found out about his brutal demotion, saying: "I flew to the UK for the simulator on whatever it was, a Tuesday or Wednesday, and then on Monday I get the phone call 'Oh actually we're switching you.'

"I was like 'what? If you told me before the race, 'ok, we're gonna run this crazy car for your last race in a Red Bull, or we're gonna run the setup that you've run all weekend,' what do you think I would have said?'

"So it was just kind of like that."

Many feel the Kiwi racer suffered an unfair run at Red Bull, especially considering he has since confirmed that the team were experimenting with wild adjustments to the car during the Chinese GP, a gamble which did not pay off for the Milton Keynes-based team that weekend, or for Lawson's career as a whole.

Touching on the toll that the unacceptable decision to demote him had taken on him, Lawson added: "At the time was like a really hard thing to deal with, but then I had Japan literally the next week or the week after, so I just didn't have time to compress or think about any of this, and I had to then go to VCARB and just try and do the best, prepare and do the best job possible.

"But it made that whole experience quite, quite tough.

"The two performances were used against me, which, regardless of the two races, whatever you know, in any case, two races on two tracks I've never been to in a season like that, like I won't accept that you can judge me off that, it's such a team game, so everybody is working together, and that was just obviously not what I felt when that happened."

F1 Red Bull Liam Lawson Racing Bulls