What Red Bull saw Liam Lawson doing behind the scenes that convinced them to retain him for 2026

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Liam Lawson was part of the final trio of drivers to learn their fate ahead of the 2026 Formula 1 season.

Red Bull took their time deciding who they wanted to be part of their racing quartet next year.

Max Verstappen was unsurprisingly a certainty, and it was Isack Hadjar who was selected as his teammate.

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Helmut Marko remained keen to promote Arvid Lindblad into a Racing Bulls seat before he stepped away from Formula 1, despite the British teenager not dominating the F2 field during his rookie season.

That meant it was a head-to-head shootout between Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda for the final race seat.

Lawson emerged victorious, and it’s now come to light what the New Zealander was doing behind the scenes that won Red Bull over to extend his contract for another year.

READ MORE: Who is Racing Bulls F1 driver Liam Lawson? Everything you need to know

Liam Lawson’s ‘working, testing and persisting’ behind the scenes earned him 2026 F1 seat

A report from Motorsport Italia has provided more details on Lawson’s 2025 campaign.

Lawson was lacking confidence after his unexpected return to Racing Bulls after the first two race weekends.

It allowed Hadjar to open up a lead in the drivers’ championship between the two youngsters, although in the second half of the campaign they were far more closely matched.

That’s an even more impressive feat when you consider that Hadjar was statistically the best qualifier across 2025 among the top four teams.

The report suggests that Red Bull and Racing Bulls staff saw Lawson ‘working, testing, and persisting’ back at the factory as he tried to work out why he wasn’t able to extract as much performance out of his car as Hadjar.

Lawson made a change to his front suspension geometry that immediately gave him a better feel for the car and his performances started to improve.

Strong results in Austria, Azerbaijan and Sao Paulo followed, and he eventually finished the season with more points than Tsunoda, earning him a stay of execution on the grid.

It’s believed that his improvement showed something to Red Bull that they ‘really cared about’, that Lawson was able to make a step up across the season, rather than letting his initial disappointment ruin the rest of his campaign.

READ MORE: All to know about Racing Bulls from team principal to Red Bull affiliation

Alan Permane’s ‘genius’ Liam Lawson comments make more sense after 2025 improvement

When Lawson arrived back at Racing Bulls, Laurent Mekies was the man he was trying to impress in his role as team principal.

However, when Christian Horner was moved on, Mekies earned a promotion, and Alan Permane stepped up in his place.

Talking to PlanetF1 about Lawson’s 2025 comeback and subsequent comeback, he said: “I really see some genius in there.

“And I think it’s down to all of us, himself included, to try and figure out, when it goes very, very well, and it does go very, very well a lot of times – you have exceptional races in Austria, in Budapest, that qualifying and race in Baku – just what’s clicking then? And let’s do that across the whole season.

“He and his race engineer spent a long time in the simulator, playing with front suspension geometries and steering geometries.

“There were bits he wasn’t happy with, and bits he wasn’t super comfortable with the car.

“They found something which we actually had on the car in Monaco, and he had a good weekend in Monaco, very decent weekend.

“But then we carried it over to Austria, and he was super happy with the car there.”