The former team principal addresses early doubts despite the driver’s current success.
Christian Horner has delivered one of the most striking admissions of his post-Red Bull career, writing in his autobiography Drive that Liam Lawson should never have been promoted to the senior team.
The former team principal makes the claim even as the New Zealander enjoys the strongest spell of his Formula 1 career, and the timing has given the passage unusual weight across the paddock.
What Horner Wrote About Lawson in Drive
The remarks, taken from an advance copy of the book and since echoed by several international outlets, concern the search for a replacement for Sergio Perez ahead of the 2025 season.
According to Horner’s account, he first pursued Fernando Alonso and then Charles Leclerc, only to see both approaches ended by Helmut Marko, then Red Bull’s motorsport adviser. Horner writes that he knew the instruction did not come from Max Verstappen, though someone had decided neither move suited the team.
With both marquee options closed, the seat went to Lawson, who had made only eleven Formula 1 starts at that point.
Horner says he was uneasy about the decision from the outset. In his telling, Lawson was young and inexperienced, and Red Bull was asking an enormous amount of a driver with only eleven starts behind him.
The book goes further, with Horner concluding that Lawson “should never have been promoted in the first place”. Lawson lasted two races before Red Bull reversed course and sent him back to Racing Bulls, swapping places with Yuki Tsunoda from the Japanese Grand Prix.
Drive to Survive Claim Under Scrutiny
The admission sits uneasily beside what Horner said earlier this year. In the latest series of Drive to Survive, he stated that the decision was not his choice and that he had always been pushed to take drivers from the junior programme, with Marko a major force behind that approach.
The two statements are not necessarily irreconcilable, since discomfort and responsibility can coexist, but they paint noticeably different pictures of who held the final say at the time.
Horner’s public reasoning at the time was somewhat more guarded. When Red Bull announced the swap in March 2025, he said the team had a duty of care to protect and develop Lawson and that it had asked too much of him too soon, describing the early change as a way to return him to an environment he knew well.
Lawson’s Strong 2026 Form at Racing Bulls
What has followed has complicated the narrative. Tsunoda fared little better at Red Bull, and Isack Hadjar was promoted into the seat for 2026 after an impressive rookie campaign.
Lawson, meanwhile, has rebuilt his standing at Racing Bulls. He had scored 69 points this season at the time of reporting, a total that includes 14 points from three races he contested for Red Bull while Hadjar recovered from a wrist injury.
The numbers within Racing Bulls reinforce the point. Lawson leads teammate Arvid Lindblad 10-4 in races and 9-5 in qualifying across their 14 shared grands prix, and with six races remaining he has contributed 61 per cent of the team’s Constructors’ Championship points.
For a driver coming off a brief and difficult Red Bull spell, that is a considerable turnaround, and it is the contrast between that form and Horner’s retrospective verdict that makes the book’s passage so notable.
Racing Bulls Outlook for 2027 Season
Attention is now turning to 2027. Racing Bulls is widely expected to keep Lawson alongside Lindblad, although the arrangement remains an expectation rather than a confirmed decision.
Asked about his future, Lawson struck a measured tone, saying it is normal for such talk to surface at this point of the season and that his focus remains on scoring points every weekend and sustaining his current run.
Horner’s book arrives at a sensitive moment. He was relieved of his duties in July 2025 after two decades leading Red Bull, and Drive is presented as his account of those years, from the Sebastian Vettel championships to the 2024 title won with Verstappen.
It is reported to be due for release on 22 October, which means current coverage rests on extracts and advance copies rather than the finished text. As with any memoir, it represents one participant’s recollection and deserves to be read alongside the contemporaneous record.
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Red Bull’s Second Seat Problem
The episode also sheds light on how Red Bull’s driver pipeline has operated under pressure. The second seat alongside Verstappen has been difficult to fill with success:
Perez was replaced after a prolonged slump, Lawson lasted two races, Tsunoda struggled to close the gap to Verstappen, and Hadjar now holds the position.
Horner’s account suggests that the choice of Lawson was a compromise reached after higher-profile options were removed, rather than a first preference, which raises broader questions about how much influence a team principal truly holds over driver selection in a structure shared with senior advisers.
For Lawson, the immediate task is unchanged: maximise points over the remaining six races and strengthen the case for a seat in 2027.
For Horner, the book’s release will test whether his reflections carry the same weight outside the paddock as within it. Either way, the contrast between a driver judged unready in 2025 and a driver now carrying his team’s points tally ensures that this chapter of Red Bull’s recent history will remain under scrutiny long after the final page is turned.
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