Is Liam Lawson a victim of F1’s restrictive testing regulations?

Liam Lawson’s replacement at Red Bull after just two races signals how restrictive F1 testing regulations are affecting young drivers’ careers.

The 23-year-old Kiwi driver has been stood down from driving for the Red Bull F1 team, with the company electing to shift him back to the sister team at Racing Bulls – resetting his competitive level from challenging for potential victories and podiums to becoming a regular points scorer.

How F1 clamped down on in-season testing

Lawson may have competed in half a season’s worth of races over the course of two years as a substitute for Daniel Ricciardo in 2023, before taking over his seat entirely for the final six races of 2024, but, for all intents and purposes, the Kiwi driver is a rookie in Formula 1 this year.

Securing his first full-time ride with Red Bull electing to put him alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull, the 11 race weekends he’d competed in over two years meant that his preparation for his return to a full-time seat this year was less than ideal.

Not only was Lawson not competing in another series as he carried out reserve duties for the two Red Bull teams, but he was ineligible for the junior driver rookie running that all teams are required to hand over to young drivers over the course of a season – only drivers of two Grands Prix experience, or fewer, can fulfil this requirement.

As a result, it was Isack Hadjar – not Lawson – who got to drive the Red Bull RB20 in FP1, as well as in the post-season young driver test in Abu Dhabi, as well as driving a two-year-old AlphaTauri at Imola in January.

In fact, aside from a filming day of 100 kilometres at Silverstone and a Pirelli tyre test in October, Lawson didn’t drive a current Red Bull F1 car during 2024 and, even once he secured his race seat, only got a day and a half’s running during the official three-day pre-season test in Bahrain.

Lawson then did the second-fewest laps of anyone during the test, completing just 149 laps of the circuit – and that was it. From there, it was straight into a Grand Prix weekend, and the resulting two weekends which have altered Lawson’s path.

Unsurprisingly, this amount of driving proved less than ideal preparation for a top-level F1 career, and it points to the extremely precriptive testing limits that are a relatively modern evolution in Formula 1.

In bygone days as recent as 2007, testing was essentially without limit – a team could rock up to an approved testing venue and pound around as much as it could afford. Not only did this give drivers plenty of preparation time if teams were lining them up for seats, but also allowed for ‘test teams’ where junior engineers and staff members could cut their teeth in a bid to impress and make it onto the race teams.

Contrast that with Lewis Hamilton carrying out over 1000 laps of pre-season testing in 2007 at the wheel of the new MP4-22 over the course of 20 test days, making him one of – if not the most – prepared F1 rookie ever.

The earlier a team committed to a rookie driver, the more mileage these drivers could accumulate before making their F1 debuts – leading to teams being able to prepare very raw rookies like Kimi Raikkonen, Fernando Alonso, and Hamilton, during that decade.

But, starting in 2008, the regulations started to clamp down. Competitors were restricted to 30,000 kilometres of testing time annually, but a key omission was that young driver training fell outside this allowance. This was defined as any driver who had not taken part in a Grand Prix for two years, or with four days or fewer testing time in that same time period.

In 2010, the regulations evolved to reduce a team’s allowance down to 15,000 kilometres for the year, with no track testing permitted whatsoever after the week preceding the first Grand Prix of the year. Three one-day young driver tests were also permitted, but they had to be held between the last Grand Prix and the 31st of December.

This evolved into a single three-day test for young drivers during the same window of the year, while a day’s allowance was added to allow teams to prepare a substitute driver for standing in for a full-time driver.

By 2015, the regulations had divvied up testing rules to something that would look familiar to today’s regulations as the definitions of TCC (Testing of Current Cars), TPC (Testing of Previous Cars), THC (Testing of Historic Cars) and PE (Promotional Events, ie. filming days) were fleshed out.

Rather than teams carrying out individual tests, combined group tests became the status quo after 2014, with 12 days of pre-season testing split up into three separate blocks of four days, as well as four in-season tests of two days each, carried out at tracks which had just held a Grand Prix.

By 2019, this was down to two pre-season tests of four days apiece, as well as two in-season tests of two days each, with the introduction of a post-season tyre test also made.

In-season tests were removed in 2020, dropping the entirety of TCC down to two three-day tests in the pre-season, alongside the Pirelli tyre testing programme – a programme which does not allow participating teams to carry out any development work in the name of performance.

In 2023, this was dropped down to a single pre-season test of three days and no in-season testing whatsoever aside from the Pirelli tyre testing programme – filming day opportunities and TPC outings having become de rigeur as a result.

Over the course of 15 years, F1 went from allowing pretty much as much testing as a team could afford to do with its current car, to almost nothing.

For rookies like Lawson, whose learning must therefore be done on points-scoring Grand Prix weekends, the regulations of yesteryear would have allowed Red Bull to carry out a test in a window like the one between China and Japan and allow solutions to be found.

This was the way it was done for a long time, and enabled drivers and teams to overcome problems away from the glare of the race track.

But, in a cost-controlled era, the restrictions which now apply – in a calendar of 24 races – mean teams can’t overspend on testing, and also reduces the personnel required as test teams are simply not required.

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From a financial and fairness perspective, the restriction on testing was a sensible one, but it does have the side effect of meaning inexperienced drivers are ‘learning on the job’ to a greater extent, meaning teams can’t afford too much patience. It also means that it can take quite a lot longer for a team to figure out issues with their cars, but that’s a separate side effect entirely.

However, while the testing of current cars is heavily restricted and would appear to have played a part in Lawson’s struggles, an avenue still available to teams is that of Testing of Previous Cars.

Useless for development work as it forces teams to use cars from two championships ago, at least, this was what Mercedes chose to do with Kimi Antonelli during 2024. TPC is effectively down to whatever a team can afford, with the practice falling outside the cost cap as a heritage asset activity.

Antonelli was thus set loose for a series of TPC outings with the 2022 Mercedes during ’24, a car from the same regulation ruleset, and allowed the teenager to develop some relevant experience that made the learning curve less steep when he jumped into the W16 in Bahrain – prescient preparation from the Brackley-based squad given the likelihood of Antonelli’s promotion.

Red Bull did not set Lawson off on a similar programme, which is perhaps understandable given that Sergio Perez was contracted – and extended – during the 2024 season, with no indication until early summer that his performance was slumping. By the time it became apparent a change was required, and the decision came down to whether or not to give his seat to Tsunoda or Lawson, the opportunity to set Lawson off on a comprehensive TPC programme (which still costs a team money) had largely passed.

Of course, one could argue that his six race weekends driving for Racing Bulls at the end of 2024 should have been enough but the caveat to that is that the VCARB has been explained as a less edgy car, one more prone to understeer – a very different design philosophy from the Red Bull and, indeed, perhaps even a hindrance for his muscle memory upon stepping into the RB21.

With Carlos Sainz also moving from a very competitive Ferrari into a midfield Williams, his struggles to adapt – despite his vast experience – suggest that that Spaniard could also have benefitted from more testing time, a fact he was vehement about when he spoke to the media in Bahrain.

“Even though I’m obviously no rookie, that day and a half of testing, I think, is frustrating for me too, but I cannot imagine even for a rookie,” Sainz said.

“I understand how difficult that makes things and how tricky the start of the season will be fo”r some of these guys. At the same time, if you could get that TPC, also that is relevant, and that can still help a lot, but experience is experience, and you only gain that on track with a real car that you’re going to drive that year.”

With Lawson’s struggles indicative of how difficult it can be for a driver without much by way of recent driving experience to get to grips with car, particularly a tricky one like the RB21, his plight may alert teams to the fact that potential candidates for a race seat, however unlikely in the season before, should be given further opportunities, at the very least, under the allowances of the TPC programme.

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