From super‑sub to full‑time: Liam Lawson’s promotion and what 2025’…

From super‑sub to full‑time: Liam Lawson’s promotion and what 2025’s driver market is telling teams

Meta description: Liam Lawson’s rise — from short‑notice sub to promoted race seat — illustrates how 2025 teams are valuing recent race readiness, team culture fit and cost of change when deciding between youth and experience.

Lede: Liam Lawson’s rise — from short‑notice sub to promoted race seat — illustrates how 2025 teams are valuing recent race readiness, team culture fit and cost of change when deciding between youth and experience.

Lawson’s path: from super‑sub to the main seat

Few Formula 1 stories this winter were as straightforward as Liam Lawson’s acceleration into a senior seat. A Red Bull junior since 2019, the New Zealander made his grand prix debut as a last‑minute substitute at Zandvoort in August 2023, answering the call when Daniel Ricciardo broke a hand in Friday practice. That hurried baptism — limited running, tricky weather, a spirited on‑track fight — was the first chapter of a stop‑start apprenticeship that would ultimately pay off.

Lawson returned to race for RB in the United States Grand Prix later in 2024 after another mid‑season switch that saw Ricciardo leave the team, and produced a series of solid midfield performances including points finishes in Singapore and the United States, according to team and series reporting. Those intermittent stints — 11 grands prix in total before his 2025 promotion, per Formula1.com — offered the practical proof Red Bull wanted: race readiness, overtaking instinct and a temperament that could cope with pressure.

The formal call came late in 2024 when Red Bull announced Lawson would replace Sergio Pérez for 2025. The team framed the move as the latest in its long tradition of promoting from within; Christian Horner and Red Bull’s communications emphasised that Lawson had already “demonstrated he’s capable of delivering strong results” and that the team would work to manage expectations around partnering a four‑time world champion. Max Verstappen publicly backed the decision, saying Lawson ‘deserves his shot’ in comments carried by Formula 1’s website.

What teams look for when promoting a super‑sub

Promotions from reserve to race seat rarely hinge on a single factor. Teams evaluate three practical markers: immediate race readiness, adaptability to a specific car to extract performance quickly, and the psychological fit with existing team culture.

Lawson’s case is instructive. He brought recent, directly comparable weekend data from RB’s car, plus a known temperament within the wider Red Bull garage. That matters. Teams are wary of the disruption an external signing can bring — off‑track acclimation, unfamiliar data patterns and potential friction — especially when the team’s primary objective is extracting maximum points from a tightly contested manufacturers’ battle.

Christian Horner and other Red Bull figures have framed the decision as one that reduces the cost of change: Lawson is known, his telemetry compares cleanly to Verstappen’s baseline, and his junior pathway gave the team early insight into strengths and failure modes. Horner’s comment about a “soft re‑entry” when Lawson returned to racing reflected another practical consideration: teams use component allocations, penalty timing and sprint formats to manage a rookie’s transition while limiting damage to championship ambitions.

Driver‑market context in 2025 (expiring contracts, Alonso/Sainz decisions)

The broader 2025 market amplified the appeal of an internal promotion. Crash.net’s analysis of the winter showed unusually many contracts running into their final year — a structural pressure that made high‑cost external raids risky. Big names and shifting engine and manufacturer plans only increased volatility: when teams face simultaneous technical uncertainties and several drivers with expiring deals, the premium for a low‑friction internal promotion rises.

Formula1.com’s 2025 grid summary underlines the knock‑on effects. High‑profile moves — from Lewis Hamilton’s earlier switch to Ferrari to reshuffles at mid‑field outfits — compressed available seats and raised the price of external acquisitions. For midfield teams, that means choosing between an experienced hand who can deliver steady points or a younger driver offering a higher upside but a learning curve.

Edd Straw’s mid‑season rankings for The Race highlight how performance swings through a season can reshape market perceptions. Lawson himself endured a rocky start to 2025 before showing a marked upward trend; The Race noted his early average ranking was weak but that more recent weekends suggested he was finding form and giving teams reason to keep him under long‑term consideration.

Upside and risks of promoting from inside (Lawson case study)

The upside of promoting a reserve like Lawson is continuity: engineers already understand his driving style, and the team’s telemetry libraries produce faster set‑up iterations. That can shorten the development feedback loop and accelerate car evolution during the season.

However, that upside comes with risks. A driver promoted rapidly into a top seat faces intense intra‑team comparison — in Lawson’s case, to Verstappen, one of the most accomplished drivers in modern F1. Red Bull’s public messaging has repeatedly tempered expectations: there is “no expectation” that Lawson must beat Verstappen, Horner said in season‑launch comments, and the team will aim to shield him from undue pressure.

Teams offset risk with staged exposure: extended reserve programmes, FP1 running, and selective race appearances to give drivers weekend experience without the full weight of a championship campaign. Red Bull’s own route — reserve duties across both its teams, then measured race stints — is a template many outfits favour when balancing upside and reliability.

What this means for younger drivers and talent pathways

Lawson’s promotion sends a clear signal to academies and managers: being ready in the car matters as much as being the most accomplished junior. Driver programmes will push for more integrated reserve work, extensive simulator fidelity and strategic short‑notice race practice because those assets are now marketable currency.

For talent managers and sponsors, the calculus changes too. A young driver who can step into a race seat and immediately contribute is a safer bet than one who looks spectacular in junior categories but lacks real‑world, weekend‑by‑weekend F1 experience. That will inform contract structures — more conditional clauses tied to reserve experience and defined FP‑running — and could broaden the role of long‑term development agreements between teams and talent backers.

And the next chapter? That’s still being written.

Lawson’s promotion is both a personal milestone and a symptom of a market in flux: teams navigating compressed technical timelines, many expiring contracts and rising costs are increasingly choosing the smallest operational change that preserves competitiveness. Whether Lawson’s raw speed and culture fit will translate into regular podium contention remains to be seen; for now, his trajectory illustrates the practical toolbox teams are using to weigh youthful upside against proven experience.