Liam Lawson
Liam Lawson grew up in Pukekohe — a small New Zealand town that once hosted its own Grand Prix — and had to relocate to Europe as a teenager to pursue motorsport seriously. He is one of a tiny handful of New Zealanders to have reached Formula 1, and the first to race for Red Bull's senior team since the programme began.
Liam Lawson is one of the Red Bull driver development programme's more patient success stories — a driver who waited longer than his results in the junior series might have predicted before receiving a sustained Formula 1 opportunity. His substitute appearances for Daniel Ricciardo at Toro Rosso/RB in 2023 were widely praised for their composure and speed, and demonstrated a psychological stability that is relatively unusual in drivers making short-notice debut appearances in Formula 1 machinery.
Lawson is from Pukekohe in New Zealand — a country with a strong motorsport tradition, particularly in touring cars and single-seaters through the Toyota Racing Series, which serves as a significant feeder series for Formula 1. He is the most prominent New Zealand presence on the current F1 grid, and his appearances have generated significant interest in a country whose Formula 1 following is historically strong despite having produced relatively few race drivers at the highest level.
Away from racing, Lawson is characterised by those who know him as grounded and direct — qualities perhaps connected to a New Zealand cultural tradition that does not particularly encourage self-promotion. He has spoken about the experience of growing up far from the European centres of motorsport, about the financial challenges of the junior series, and about the role that the Red Bull programme has played in his development. His path to the grid has been longer than some of his contemporaries, and he appears, by general assessment, better for it.
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Pukekohe, where Lawson grew up, hosted the New Zealand Grand Prix at its circuit from 1963 to 2000. The town of around 30,000 people has motorsport in its DNA — the circuit sits on the edge of town and local schoolchildren could hear the engines from their classrooms. Growing up in that environment, surrounded by motorsport history, shaped Lawson's ambitions from a very young age.
New Zealand has produced just a small number of Formula 1 drivers across the sport's entire history. The most famous is Denny Hulme, who won the 1967 world championship. Reaching F1 from New Zealand requires not only the talent but the financial commitment to relocate to Europe in the junior categories — a significant undertaking for a family from the other side of the world.
While serving as Red Bull's reserve driver in 2023, Lawson was also racing in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM) in Germany. He was therefore preparing to step into an F1 car at any moment while also competing in a completely different racing series across Europe. When Ricciardo was injured at Zandvoort in 2023, Lawson was called up and stepped seamlessly into F1 — one of the more composed debuts in recent memory.
Lawson has spoken about the challenge of maintaining a sense of home identity while living and racing in England and Europe. He follows New Zealand rugby and sport closely, and his family's support structure — flying from New Zealand to European races — reflects the logistical reality of having a racing driver in the family from the Southern Hemisphere.
Racing in European junior series requires relocation, and Lawson's family supported his move to Europe in his early teenage years. The financial and personal commitment involved in backing a young driver from New Zealand through the European karting and single-seater ladder is substantial. Lawson has acknowledged this support as fundamental to his career reaching the level it has.