In the latest instalment of Off The Grid, Liam Lawson clears his schedule for a day to give us a look at his life away from the track – and in return, we take him to a place we know he’ll love, just a short drive away from where he lives…
Liam Lawson may have fewer than 50 race starts under his belt but it feels like he’s been on the Formula 1 grid for ages. And that’s probably because the start of his career has been so fragmented, spread across four years.
The New Zealander got his shot as a replacement for the injured Daniel Ricciardo at AlphaTauri in 2023, but that was for a defined five-race stint. He then didn’t get back in the car until late the following year, when he replaced Ricciardo for the rest of the season.
A shock promotion to Red Bull followed in 2025 – but he was demoted to Racing Bulls after just two races, before rebuilding his career at the energy drinks company’s sister team and earning a second full-time campaign in 2026, where he has so far scored eight times in 11 Grands Prix.
It’s been a heck of a ride for a kid from the other side of the world in New Zealand, whose parents sold their house while his siblings gave up their own dreams to allow Lawson to pursue his ambitions in motorsport, even if they didn’t know much about the industry.
“My parents sold the house when I was go-kart racing to be able to afford to keep racing,” he says. “Everybody sacrificed a lot: family holidays, stuff like that. My sisters both danced internationally, and they stood down that as well.
“My dad didn’t have an understanding of motorsport at all. He taught me how to drive and my dad’s a terrible driver! So we’d go out in the pouring rain and he just tried my slick tyre and he would stand on a corner and tell me to brake where he stood.
“I’m like six years old and if your dad tells you to brake where he’s standing, at six years old you do what he says you need to do. Every lap, he would take a step back. He would just keep going until eventually I would obviously go off the end of the straight because I braked too late. Then he’d take a step forward and say ‘okay, that’s where you brake’!”
Lawson moved to Europe when he was 16 to accelerate his experience in single-seaters and finished second in German F4 in 2018, before joining the Red Bull Junior Programme the following year, which gave him a clearer path towards Formula 1.
Red Bull supported his progress through the single-seater ladder with a campaign in Japan’s popular Super Formula series coming his way in 2023. The New Zealander hauled himself into championship contention, but crashed in Motegi in August, leading him into the unknown territory of questioning whether he would ever make it to F1.
“It was probably the first time ever that I actually started to have small doubts about it, about getting to Formula 1,” he says. “It was coming to the end of the year and I’m not hearing much. For the first time I was actually like, this might not happen here – and I’d never felt like that.”
But then a series of events changed his life when he flew to the Netherlands for the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort a few days later, the first of which was a meeting Lawson forced with Red Bull Motorsport Advisor Helmut Marko, who had a big say in who got promoted to F1.
“I had three days of basically reflecting on stuff and then I flew to Zandvoort,” he says. “I decided I’m just going to sit down with Helmut and press him, basically find out what he’s thinking.
“I went into his office on Friday morning at Zandvoort [ahead of first practice] and said ‘Why won’t you just give me a chance? You’ve invested all this money in me. What’s the point? I’ve been in the programme for five years.’ It got to the point where I think he got a little bit pissed off because he basically just shut me down.
“I left that meeting and I called my coach who was there and I was talking to him. ‘This is pretty tough.’”
A couple of hours later, Ricciardo crashed, injuring his hand and forcing him out of the race weekend – and as it turned out, the next four races. This could be Lawson’s chance – but it wasn’t certain he would get the nod to make his F1 debut.
“It wasn’t just a straight cut: ‘Liam’s going to be in the car’,” says Lawson. “It was: ‘Who else can we get in who’s potentially had experience, who’s driven the car?’ I went to Helmut and I just walked in there and he looked at me and he goes, ‘are you ready?’ I said: ‘Yep’. And that was the whole conversation.”
Lawson impressed in his five-race stint, including knocking four-time World Champion Max Verstappen out of Qualifying in Singapore and going on to score his first points in the race – but he was stood down when Ricciardo was fit enough to return.
The team decided to keep Ricciardo for the following season, leaving Lawson on the bench, but he kept making his case behind the scenes. “I was just trying to push that door – so throughout the year, speaking to Helmut, speaking to Christian [Horner, Red Bull boss], just asking, ‘When am I going to get the chance?’.”
That chance came in Austin, when Red Bull decided to part ways with Ricciardo and give Lawson the seat – this time until the end of the season. Did he feel conflicted moving into Ricciardo’s seat knowing it was likely the end of the Australian’s career in F1?
“I never did because the thing is, as much as it sucks, we’re all fighting for these seats,” he says. “There’s nothing personal to it. But when you’re fighting for your career, it’s just everything and you can’t put anything in front of that.”
Lawson has grabbed his chance with both hands – and seems to be doing everything he can to convince Racing Bulls to keep him on for next season.
After a tour of his apartment and a drive into the hills, we arrive at a dirt track where Lawson can enjoy one of his favourite pastimes – dirt biking. When he was a kid, he says that the only thing on his Christmas wish list was a dirt bike.
He loves the sport so much, he’s even built his own track, on a smaller scale, back home in New Zealand. “I ride for a couple of hours, go to the gym, go back, ride for a couple of hours,” he says. “It’s so much fun. Living my best life, honestly.”
You can watch the full episode of Off The Grid with Liam Lawson on F1 TV and YouTube now.
