Helmut Marko breaks his silence on Liam Lawson being fired from Red Bull
Red Bull's Helmut Marko has spoken up for the first time since Liam Lawson was fired by the team and feels that the call was made keeping the driver's interest in mind. The young Kiwi was promoted by the squad to replace Sergio Perez at the senior team for the 2025 season.
Liam Lawson was competing in his first season in the sport after taking part in a handful of races in both 2023 and 2024. The challenge was obviously going to be immense for the Kiwi. He was stepping into a car that has been notoriously tough to get a strong laptime out of. At the same time, he had Max Verstappen as his teammate, arguably the greatest driver of his generation.
The start to life at Red Bull was not ideal for Liam Lawson. After a reliability issue hurt him in terms of track time in Australia, he was unable to recover from it. He had a Q1 elimination, which was followed by crashing out of his first race for the team.
The second race went even worse as Liam Lawson qualified dead last for Red Bull in both the sprint and the Grand Prix. As a result, the driver was fired by the team as he got demoted to Racing Bulls and replaced by Yuki Tsunoda. Talking to The Telegraph, Helmut Marko said that the problem for the Kiwi was the fact that his confidence continued to drop and made things untenable. He said,
"Liam has had a lot of bad luck. During the test days in Bahrain he missed a lot of time due to mechanical problems. And during the third free practice in Australia he also lost important time. That's when the problems started. The pressure on him became greater and greater. He lost confidence, tried harder and harder, but made more mistakes as a result. In China it went from bad to worse. In addition, our car is very difficult to drive and is not the fastest."
Marko did admit that this wasn't an easy decision in any which way but used the example of Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon as drivers who have been able to bounce back from this in the past. He said,
"It wasn't an easy decision either. But Liam was like a battered boxer. And we're not throwing him out of Formula 1. He'll stay active within Red Bull and the Racing Bull is a good car. We've had to make similar decisions in the past with Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon. They've since recovered and are highly respected Formula 1 drivers. We're in the unique position to be able to do this. In another team, he would have left Formula 1 straight away."
Liam Lawson lacks confidence in the Red Bull car
Expanding on why Red Bull was willing to take a call this early and not give Liam Lawson a few races to show what he's capable of, Helmut Marko said that this had to do with the fact that the driver was already very low on confidence. The first two weekends had taken a toll on the driver and extending the ordeal was not the best call. Marko said,
"He lacks confidence now and it's very difficult to turn it around. I think we're actually helping Liam with this. We didn't expect him to have performed in the upcoming races. And then the pressure would only be greater. It's impossible to turn around a difficult car like the RB21 very quickly. But yesterday (Thursday, ed.) Max Verstappen had a very positive meeting with the engineers. We really still have confidence. But realistically, the next three races will still be very difficult for Red Bull."
Liam Lawson will now head back to Racing Bulls, a team with which Pierre Gasly was able to regain his confidence and have a very impressive career as well.