Liam Lawson: The Part of My Red Bull Story Nobody Knows (E417)

**Jake Humphrey** (0:03)
There was not one part of you that thought that phone call was coming.

**Liam Lawson** (0:07)
No. Liam Lawson has been removed from the role after just two races. The whole thing was played out to be me being mentally struggling and all this stuff. This could not be further from what it was actually like. I think nothing as well can stay really a secret. It's quite crazy how there'll be a conversation which is between two people, and it's insane how quickly that just gets out.

**Jake Humphrey** (0:27)
What is the cost for you of this life? Is it fair to say that after what happened with Red Bull, the effects of that you would have carried for all of our season?

**Liam Lawson** (0:41)
I tried not to, but I definitely did, yeah. I tried to just, as much as possible.
You know, I even pretended it never even happened kind of thing, because I spent two races there. And the whole way that whole, the way it all went down was just so crazy that I just honestly kind of was like, I'm just going to pretend I never even went there. And my whole, pretty much everything else I've done with V-Carbon Formula One, so.

**Jake Humphrey** (1:06)
What do we not understand, or what have we not been allowed to see that is actually the thing you'd like us to understand about that time?

**Liam Lawson** (1:13)
Then let me say probably firstly, I could have done, you can always do a better job. So I look at that stuff, I look at those two races. If I want to reflect on them, I can go, and I know, and I did at the time, okay, I could have done a better job in some ways. But I think just the way we did really no testing, I did half a day in Harreth before the season. And even then our bar end testing was very compromised as well. We had some issues and I just went into the first weekend very unprepared.
And...

**Jake Humphrey** (1:47)
Did you feel that?

**Liam Lawson** (1:48)
I did, yeah, but I just keep telling myself that, like, I'll just deal with it, you know, it'll be fine. But I think we all back ourselves, but there is, you know, with how close, especially last year, it was so close. Like, if I'm three tenths off max, I'm out in Q1, pretty much. It's so close, so it's just like, you know, you had to be, or maybe five tenths, something like that. It was really, it was really, really close season. So, the difference between the, you know, top teams, you know, I remember IBEW last year, Q2, I missed out, I think I missed out on going through to Q3, but there was like seven cars within a tenth in the midfield. It was wild. So, that made it hard, for sure, but it was just a preparation that we, we, I don't think, did a good job at all. But then, you know, maybe I could have done a better job as well. And then Melbourne was, you know, I had missed P3 with an engine issue, which we had planned to do two soft tire runs before quali. So, I kind of went into quali with no soft tire running, and then I made mistakes. And that's where, okay, I was unprepared going in, but I tried to make up for it, and locked up, went off, which I never do. Like, it was just stupid mistakes that I never do. Knocked out, and then I'm starting the race at the back. And then, we went to China, and it was sprint weekend. I'd never driven there, and it was just same kind of thing, trying to just make up for lack of preparation and just mistakes, like little mistakes. And last year, it was, you know, you mess up a corner, you're out, your lap's done, it wasn't, you had to put a lap together, you couldn't. When it's more separate, you can kind of get away with little mistakes here and there, especially when you have this year, you have energy making such a big difference. When last year, it was that close, you had to put it all together, and I just didn't do it in either of those two weekends, and that was it. Then there was the race in China. We'd spoken about basically trying something quite wild on the car to get some comfort for me, but also because the team, you know, at the time, collectively, we weren't happy at all with the car. Max wasn't happy, you know, everyone was like, this is not, this is not working.