Lawson earns Mekies praise after strong Red Bull return

Laurent Mekies has given Liam Lawson a ringing endorsement after the Kiwi made the most of his last-minute return to Red Bull at the Dutch Grand Prix.

Called into the senior team at short notice after Isack Hadjar’s wrist injury ruled the Frenchman out, Lawson had little time to settle back into Red Bull’s RB22 before being asked to deliver.

Yet he did exactly that, producing a strong qualifying performance before converting it into seventh place in Sunday’s race.

For Mekies, the circumstances made Lawson’s performance all the more creditable.

The Red Bull boss recognised that jumping between two Formula 1 teams during a race weekend is far from straightforward, yet Lawson managed to emerge from the experience with a solid points haul.

“It's so difficult nowadays to jump from a team to another, so I think Liam did what he could," Mekies told Sky F1. 

Lawson’s weekend had not started spectacularly, with the super-sub finishing 11th in Saturday’s Sprint. But he responded when it mattered, qualifying eighth for the Grand Prix and putting himself just over a tenth of a second behind Max Verstappen.

That was a particularly encouraging effort given that Lawson had been parachuted into the Red Bull operation with almost no preparation. More importantly, it suggested he was able to adapt quickly enough to extract a respectable level of performance from a car that was not his regular Racing Bulls machinery.

Race pace difficult to assess

The race itself offered little opportunity to fight at the front. McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari were simply too strong, leaving Lawson to focus on executing his own race and holding the best position available to him.

When Verstappen crashed out, Lawson inherited seventh place, but Mekies was keen to point out that the absence of his regular teammate made Lawson’s race pace difficult to assess.

“He obviously did a very good job in qualifying yesterday being only a tenth away from Max, today was a bit of a race on his own,” said the Red bull chief.

“We are missing the reference from Max so, you know, no judgment on the pace but he took the points, he took the points of seventh place and that's probably the best he could have done today.”

There was one blemish. Lawson picked up a 10-second penalty for failing to slow sufficiently for a single yellow flag at Turn 3 after Esteban Ocon stopped at the following corner.

In the context of his afternoon, though, the penalty had no bearing on the final result, with Lawson finishing a lap ahead of Nico Hulkenberg in eighth.

A second chance with Red Bull?

Lawson was equally realistic about what he had achieved. The New Zealander admitted that the opening lap was enjoyable, but once the race settled down, Red Bull lacked the pace required to stay with the leading teams.

“Today was hard, honestly,” Lawson told Sky Sports.

“The first lap was quite fun, but from then, honestly, we just struggled for pace to match the front guys.

“But I feel like after yesterday I knew it was going to be a hard race, we were both behind them and I feel like I did a pretty good lap yesterday, so I knew it was gonna be hard.

“Probably not that hard, like we really struggled to keep up with the front teams, but I'm sure there's stuff I can learn from. I'll obviously try and have an understanding after the weekend.”

That attitude could prove important as Red Bull weighs up what comes next.

Zandvoort was Lawson’s first Grand Prix for the senior team since his difficult two-race stint at the beginning of 2025, when he was quickly dropped back to Racing Bulls.

This time, however, he returned under very different circumstances and produced a performance that gave Mekies little reason to complain.

Whether Lawson will actually remain with Red Bull for Monza is still unclear, with Hadjar expected to return once he has recovered. But the Kiwi has certainly strengthened his case in the meantime.

A seventh-place finish, a qualifying lap within striking distance of Verstappen and a clean adaptation to a completely different working environment amounted to a highly useful reminder of what Lawson can offer when opportunity comes knocking.

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