Helmut Marko: Liam Lawson will ‘definitely’ get one of our seats next year
Tereza Hořínková
News.gp journalist and a girl with big dreams
Red Bull is in a position where they have to give Liam Lawson a seat for the 2025 season in one of their teams, otherwise they risk losing him to another F1 team. According to Helmut Marko, he will definitely sit in one of their cars next year. Who is he going to replace?
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Liam Lawson is a young talented racing driver from New Zealand, who is part of the Red Bull Junior Team, which grooms young talent for Formula 1. Lawson has raced in various junior categories, including Formula 3 and Formula 2, and also competed in Super Formula, where he impressed with his performances.
In 2023, he made his Formula 1 debut with Scuderia AlphaTauri as a substitute for Daniel Ricciardo for 5 races, after he broke his hand. In those races, he showed, that he has a potential to race at the top level of motorsport.
This year, Lawson is a reserve driver for Red Bull and RB at the same time, while not competing in any other racing series and patiently waiting for his F1 chance. That might come very soon as Red Bull has to make a decision about his future by the end of the 2024 season. According to Helmut Marko, Lawson will definitely get a seat in either Red Bull or RB next season, which leaves out a question, who is he going to replace?
Max Verstappen’s seat is the only one of the 4 seats, that is 100% not available as he has been Red Bull’s main priority for many years now. Yuki Tsunoda renewed his contract with RB earlier this season and there would be only one scenario, when his seat would be available and that is if he would get promoted to Red Bull’s main team to replace Sergio Perez.
Before the summer break, there were some speculations that Perez might get replaced by some of the RB drivers because of his disappointing results throughout this season. Despite that, Red Bull decided to stick with him as he still has a valid contract till the end of the season, which doesn’t guarantee him the seat but the replacement is now not very likely.
That leaves the only open seat, which is Daniel Ricciardo’s seat now. There is a possibility that Ricciardo might get promoted to Red Bull but the reasons why that is not very likely are the same as with Yuki Tsunoda. Does that mean that Daniel Ricciardo will lose his seat in favor of Liam Lawson?
Marko’s statement wasn’t really clear and what he said in the past, hasn't always turned out to be true, therefore it is necessary to wait for the official statement from Red Bull Racing that should come soon.
