Lawson's Racing Bulls Seat in Question Despite Charge From 22nd to Seventh

Sky Sports’ Ted Kravitz has argued that Racing Bulls cannot drop Liam Lawson on current form, before conceding, as reported by PlanetF1, that “they can. They might.” The comments follow Lawson’s drive from 22nd on the grid to seventh at the Mexico City Grand Prix on 1 November. He arrives in São Paulo for round 20 as the highest-placed driver in the championship outside the four leading teams. Kravitz’s two-sentence U-turn sums up Red Bull’s driver programme better than most essays: results earn you an argument, not a contract.

What 22nd to seventh said about Lawson

Mexico was the clearest statement Lawson has made all season. Starting 22nd, he gained 15 places and collected six points. The only drivers to finish ahead of him were Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris and George Russell, so every car in front belonged to Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull or McLaren. He also finished two places ahead of Isack Hadjar, who started seventh in the senior Red Bull and came home ninth.

The afternoon was less kind to the other side of the garage. Arvid Lindblad qualified eighth, the kind of grid slot that should turn into points at a circuit where midfield cars can hold position, but retired. On a day when Racing Bulls had one car in the top 10 on the grid and the other at the back, the car at the back was the one that scored.

The season-long picture tells the same story with more weight behind it:

Driver	Team	Points	Championship position
Isack Hadjar	Red Bull	107	8th
Liam Lawson	Racing Bulls	83	9th
Pierre Gasly	Alpine	42	10th
Arvid Lindblad	Racing Bulls	38	11th

Lawson has nearly double the points of Gasly, the next-best driver from a midfield team. He has scored 45 more than his team-mate. He sits 24 points behind Hadjar, who has spent the year in a car that has won three Grands Prix. Racing Bulls are fifth in the constructors’ championship on 108 points, 39 clear of Alpine, and Lawson has been the main reason for that cushion.

In most teams, that would end the conversation. A driver who leads the midfield and anchors his team’s best championship position becomes the first name on next year’s entry list.

Why points are not the only currency in Faenza

Racing Bulls do not work like most teams, and Kravitz’s swift self-correction shows he knows it. The Faenza outfit exists in large part to answer one question on Red Bull’s behalf: can this driver one day sit alongside, or succeed, Max Verstappen? Points and prize money matter, but they come second to that assessment.

Seen through that lens, Lawson’s strong season sits awkwardly. Red Bull have already given him their answer once. His promotion to the senior team for 2025 lasted two races before he was sent back to Racing Bulls in a swap with Yuki Tsunoda. Since then, Hadjar has taken the Red Bull seat for 2026. Unless the senior team’s view of Lawson has changed, he is being judged as a very good midfield driver rather than a future Red Bull driver. Under the programme’s logic, a seat held by a driver who has already been evaluated is a seat that cannot be used to evaluate someone new.

There is also the question of what Lindblad needs. A rookie is best judged against a stable, known reference, and Lawson is exactly that. His 2026 results give Red Bull a ready yardstick, and removing him would deprive Lindblad’s second season of its most useful comparison. It would also put two drivers whose ceilings are still unknown in the same garage, which tends to produce a team that scores less and learns less.

That is the strongest internal argument for keeping Lawson, and it does not depend on sentiment. The counter-argument is simply that the junior pipeline needs room, and Red Bull have rarely let a team-mate’s usefulness stand in the way of a promotion they wanted to make.

A programme that has always been willing to cut

Red Bull’s recent history gives Lawson reason to worry. Daniil Kvyat was moved from Red Bull back to Toro Rosso four races into 2016. Pierre Gasly was demoted midway through 2019, and Alexander Albon was left without a race seat at the end of 2020. Nyck de Vries lasted 10 races at AlphaTauri in 2023 before he was replaced. Daniel Ricciardo was released after the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix, with Lawson himself taking the seat from the following round in Austin.

Lawson owes his full-time career to that ruthlessness, which makes the current debate rather pointed. The system that cleared space for him could clear it again.

The history also contains a warning for Red Bull. Gasly and Albon both rebuilt their reputations elsewhere, and the programme spent years watching drivers it had judged insufficient perform well in other teams’ cars. The decision to keep Tsunoda at the junior team for four full seasons, as a benchmark and a reliable points scorer, worked better than the revolving door that came before it. It gave the team continuity and gave Red Bull a stable measure for every driver who came through. Lawson is serving the same purpose in 2026, with better results.

There is a market reality too. A driver ninth in the championship in a midfield car, with experience of the senior team and a reputation for racecraft, will not be short of interest. If Racing Bulls let him go, they would be releasing an asset that another midfield team, chasing the very championship places Racing Bulls currently hold, would be glad to have.

Four races to make the decision harder

Brazil is the first of the four remaining rounds, and Lawson’s task is easy to describe and difficult to do: make dropping him look plainly wrong. The constructors’ table gives him the clearest platform. Fifth place is worth real money, and Alpine’s 39-point deficit is not impossible to close over four weekends if Racing Bulls hit a bad patch. A driver who keeps that gap open largely on his own is easy to value.

The comparison with Hadjar matters as well, even if nobody at Red Bull will say so. A 24-point gap to a driver in a front-running car is unusually small. If Lawson closes it further, the case that he was written off too quickly in 2025 becomes harder to dismiss, even if a return to the senior team remains unlikely.

The risk lies in the other direction. Lawson’s season has been defined by consistency and recovery drives, and one or two scrappy weekends would hand his critics their argument at the worst possible moment. Red Bull’s decisions have often reflected the most recent races as much as the season as a whole.

Kravitz is right on both counts. On merit, Racing Bulls cannot justify dropping Lawson. Historically, Red Bull have often been willing to do so anyway. The sensible decision, and the one that serves Lindblad’s development as well as the team’s championship position, is to keep Lawson for 2027 as the benchmark the team plainly needs. If the programme chooses a new face instead, it will be making the same choice it made with Gasly and Albon, and another team is likely to benefit.