After a turbulent 2025 season that included an early demotion from Red Bull to Racing Bulls after only two races at the senior team, Lawson has opened 2026 with points finishes in two of the first three races and a renewed sense of stability.
“It’s pretty different to this time last year,” Lawson told Speedcafe and other media.
“This time last year I was fighting for a race seat and obviously was a very difficult point of the very start of my Formula 1 career to be honest.
“Stability-wise, things are in a much better place at the moment, and I think everybody around me is a lot happier as well.
“So it’s been a good start to the year.”
Lawson’s early-season form has reflected that stability, with the New Zealander scoring a seventh place in both the China Sprint and Grand Prix before adding ninth in Japan, helping Racing Bulls establish themselves in a tightly packed midfield group.
But despite the encouraging results, Lawson said there was still work to do for the upcoming races, with the team focused on extracting consistent performance from the new generation of cars.
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“The biggest challenge is getting our heads around these new cars, the progression, the development of everything, which is pretty exciting for us, as much as the cars are quite tricky at the moment,” he said.
“There’s quite often where you end up going faster through corners and then slower over the lap because you’ve used more battery. And finding that balance is quite difficult.”
Lawson pointed to energy deployment as one of the defining technical headaches of the current regulations, while also highlighting a key strength within the Racing Bulls package.
“I think for us, our power unit has been very, very strong. Especially for a season one power unit. Nobody expected it to be like this,” he said.
While he acknowledged a deficit in outright downforce and single-lap pace, Lawson believed the team’s ability to consistently extract performance had been central to its early points haul.
“We’ve managed to capitalise on that stuff and we just want to try and keep doing that through the next few races,” he added.
Team boss Alan Permane said he believed Lawson’s improved environment had been critical to his development, particularly after the disrupted start to his rookie campaign.
“I think it’s helped,” Permane admitted.
“I think to just be part of the team from the start, because obviously you can’t compare it to last year.”
Permane also highlighted consistency as the next major step for the 24-year-old, insisting that raw speed is already evident.
“I said it many times, and I say again with Liam, I see immense talent there. Really. Some of his performances last year were outstanding,” he said.
“What he needs to do, and what he is doing so far, is eliminate mistakes.
“We can’t be qualifying third on the grid one weekend and then out in Q1 the following weekend. That sort of thing. And he knows that. And he’s working hard to ensure that doesn’t happen.
“And if he doesn’t improve his top level, if he just eliminates the bad level and lifts everything up to what we know he’s capable of, that will already be a fantastic step. And that’s the next thing to build.
“But I’d much rather he works on… not worked on the absolute pace, because I think that’s there – it’s working on the consistency, which he’s doing.”
Racing Bulls are now preparing a two-stage upgrade plan, with new parts scheduled for Miami and a follow-up package expected for Canada, following calendar changes that reshuffled their original development timeline.
“We had a pretty decent upgrade planned for Bahrain, which of course we will see in Miami,” Permane explained.
“We had another upgrade planned for Montreal, so we will have a sort of quick double hit there.
“There was no way to bring them both (to Miami). The Montreal one we can’t bring earlier, so it’s a slightly strange situation where we’ll bring a new, quite decent upgrade, a new component, and then almost replace it straight away.
“That’s just the way the calendar has fallen.”
Racing Bulls sit seventh in the constructors’ championship, two points behind Red Bull.
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