Liam Lawson will rejoin Max Verstappen as a team-mate at Red Bull Racing for this weekend's Dutch Grand Prix, after previously praising the four-time world champion's personality. Lawson steps up from sister team Racing Bulls to replace Isack Hadjar, who is ruled out with a wrist injury sustained ahead of the season-resuming event at Circuit Zandvoort, Verstappen's home race.
Lawson's Return to Red Bull
This will be Lawson's third race for the senior team. He briefly partnered Verstappen last season after being selected as Sergio Perez's replacement, but was demoted to the sister team following two poor results. Since then, he has rebuilt his career and currently sits ninth in the drivers' standings with 43 points.
During their short time as team-mates, Lawson and Verstappen established mutual respect. Reflecting on his Red Bull stint, Lawson has been complimentary about the Dutchman.
Praise for Verstappen's Character
Speaking on the High Performance podcast, Lawson said: "In general, Max was just always very real, like he's somebody that at such a high-level, accomplished position that he's in, it'd be very easy for him to not be like that. And it's not just with me; he seems to be like that with everybody. I think Max is somebody who just wants to race cars and loves to talk about cars, loves to talk about racing."
Lawson added: "When I came in, I noticed he would always make an effort to, like, just acknowledge me and say hi and stuff like this, and when I first was a reserve, he knew I was racing F2 and said he'd come and ask me about it, 'How's F2 going? How's the car? What do you know? How's everything feeling?'"
Support During Difficult Period
He continued: "I remember at the time it was just really cool, and he's always been very real like that. So, and then when I went to Red Bull through all of it, he was very supportive. I won't go too much into detail about it, but he was very supportive, very, very supportive. I spoke to a lot of people during that time, but I spoke to him about it, basically, and he was, he was very supportive."
Lawson was removed from Red Bull 18 months ago after failing to score a point. According to a GPblog report, Verstappen disagreed with the decision and told team bosses to give the New Zealander more time, but then-team principal Christian Horner and Helmut Marko went against his wishes. Lawson will hope to impress this weekend, with Yuki Tsunoda filling his temporarily vacant seat at Racing Bulls as reserve driver for both teams.
