Liam Lawson calls out Red Bull and Alpine over ‘unfair’ F1 firings

Liam Lawson has called out Red Bull and Alpine for “unfairly” treating their dreams after he and Jack Doohan were dropped after just a handful of races last season.

Lawson, though, concedes he could at least draw some comfort from still being on the grid, even if it wasn’t his “dream drive” from childhood.

Liam Lawson says Red Bull and Alpine judged drivers too quickly

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Last season was a brutal one for Lawson and Doohan as neither was given much time to prove themselves on the Formula 1 stage.

Lawson had been promoted to Red Bull on the back of a six-race audition with Red Bull’s sister team in late 2024, seeing off Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda in the race to partner Max Verstappen.

As for Doohan, the Australian had been confirmed as an Alpine driver in August 2024 – just weeks before Franco Colapinto made his Williams debut.

Five races into what was expected to be their first full seasons on the F1 grid, Lawson was back with Racing Bulls, replaced at Red Bull by Tsunoda, and Doohan had lost his Alpine seat to Colapinto.

Unlike Red Bull with its second team, for Doohan there was no soft landing.

But that was the only consolation for the New Zealander, who feels both he and Doohan were treated unfairly, as a driver cannot be judged in just a handful of races.

Speaking on the High Performance podcast, Lawson said: “All this stuff was happening, and there was nothing I could do about it once it had happened, so I was obviously frustrated, devastated at the time.

“But there was nothing I could do about it anymore.

“So it’s a very normal thing to say, but it’s just focus on the things that you can control, and like breaking that stuff down.

“Going, ‘okay, look, it’s all done, you’re still in Formula One’.

“And that’s the thing I think I thought about a lot. There’s a lot of guys that got badly treated, and unfairly treated in Formula One, and we’re out.

“Over the years there’s many cases where you’d argue that wasn’t fair.

“Jack Doohan, somebody who did five races, that is not fair to judge somebody.

“I had two in a Red Bull, but even five races as a whole is not fair to judge somebody in Formula One again in a season like last year.

“But I still had a drive, so that was what I tried to really focus on, and that’s what we talked about a lot.

“You still have an opportunity to prove yourself here, you still have an opportunity to build a future in Formula One, that’s all still there without focusing on the fact that I lost the dream drive that I wanted since I was young.”

Today, Lawson says he’s grateful for that Red Bull experience as difficult as it was at the time.

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Asked about that, he replied: “It comes exactly back to that. Basically, like now, whenever I think about it, I feel like I’m a far better driver, and a far more resilient driver.

“And especially in today’s Formula One, with how much outside noise there is, really that’s so much more of an important part now to be a good driver, to be good in Formula 1 right now, you have to be able to drive the car fast, but everybody can, and it’s all really that other stuff that you have to be really, I think, resilient to.

“I think that’s something that I’m now more grateful for, because there was so much going on around it, so much noise at the time, and like to navigate all of that was, it was really hard, honestly, at the time, like it was very tough.”

Although Lawson’s Red Bull career was by far the shortest, he’s not only driver who has been axed mid-season.

In recent years, Daniil Kvyat was dropped in 2016 to make space for Max Verstappen, Pierre Gasly lasted 12 races, Alex Albon a year and a half, Lawson just two races, and Tsunoda 22.

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