WTF is Happening to Liam Lawson?

[Music] [Music] a higher ceiling so much for that there is a couple of things that you've got to know about the New Zealand Sports band psyche the first is that we will defend our Sports people until the ends of the Earth we'll brand them as Heroes Gods even we'll have them advertise canned mush and we'll call them the best in the world even if they've never played a game in their life but the moment they begin to struggle will drop them like a DC 10 it's called tall poppy syndrome and it is our biggest failing

among other things I've made it no secret about how much I rated Liam Lawson thought of him as New Zealand's best Prospect for a Formula 1 driver since well it has been a long time since we last had one which is why this was so tantalizing sure the prospect of facing down the Flying Dutchman as a teammate seemed daunting but as a sporting Nation we have our gets jammed so far up our own ass that we can see past stuff like that but now that it's all already over I guess it's time for us as

a nation to pull our party trick and cut bait with Liam Lawson right well yes and no because a lot of stuff has led up to this point and it seems that we always tend to [Music] forget 2018 was the bestest time in the world for Red Bull Racing but well maybe not quite Mercedes were the king of the hill at that time but the team at Milton Kings could still will hold an answer for them from time to time at least thanks to the pencil of Adrian newie as well as their two fantastic drivers

at the helm obviously they had Max V stappen still a little rough around the edges but they can make it work they went through hell in creation for this guy and they were going to see it through to The Bitter End but the other Marquee driver that they had over the past few seasons one that had earned a lot of bread for them was Daniel Ricardo established fast cool funny Australian well no one's perfect though in instances like Monaco that year you swear that he was just different gravy but despite being the commodity that he

was for that team whether commercially or on the racetrack Danny big dick mcre laid the smackdown on Red Bull that year by announcing that for 2019 he would be Ving toor Reno part of it was down to him wanting to build his own legacy at another team but you also did get the feeling that this wasn't part to him losing his status within that team to Max as throughout 2018 Max was becoming more polished as the season went on this left a vacancy at the Red Bull team for 2019 I'm sure if red bu can

clone they would have two Max pens in that team but that technology wasn't quite available at that time so they instead opted for Pierre gazley gazley had shown his stuff in the Torah Roso and was touted as the wave of the future but it wouldn't work out by the Midway point of the Season Billy 12 races into his tenure they threw him back down to manadi and swapped him with Alexander albon it was a bad drowning for Gaza but that happens sometimes in Formula 1 they ran with albon for the better part of a year

and a half before cutting him lose as well and in 2021 they would take on board an outsider in the form of Sergio Perez a worthwhile signing in it was deserving but it did kind of tell how desperate Red Bull were at the time their last two Junior drivers didn't work so best look outside of their wheelhouse here for the better part of a couple of years sheo did pretty much looked like the guy that Red Bull finally needed but gradually things started to slide and throughout the entirety of 2024 his seat was in constant

Jeopardy finally they would get rid of him at the end of the season and replaced him with at long last one of their Juniors Liam Lawson and right off the bat it was met with firm resistance from a lot of people looking in from the outside a lot of fans hated it and people around the paddock were puzzled Lawson only had 11 races under his belt in the two quarter stance that he had at vub and both were fine I guess under the circumstances and everything they were perfectly acceptable but on paper he was comprehensively

beaten by teammate Yuki Coda it was generally thought that yisan was much more prepared for that Red Bull seat than Liam was but Red Bull tried to claim that after analyzing everything that Liam was the better option and that he had a higher ceiling and blah blah blah blah blah Yuki therefore was looked over for reasons that were only really known to them despite his adamant that he wanted that seat and that it was more suited to his driving style and even Honda weighing in couldn't get them to budge toward Yuki and so the commitment

was made the Hat was over the wall that 2025 Red Bull seat was Liam's now no one was under any illusion about what Liam was going up against when heading into that seat I mean yeah I did make the not's all badly age Proclamation that he would put the damn thing on the front row in Melbourne and that he would win a race at some stage during the season but there was mate in the thought that at some stage this curse bestowed upon the second Red Bull seat surely had to end right right preseason testing

didn't really show us too much of anything nobody really knew where anybody was but there was definitely nothing that caused any alarm well apart from the spin but almost all of us have an account on X so we can't be throwing glass in stone houses now can't we the Red Bull did look a bit of a bastard to drive but as Liam said before the season started in Formula 1 you have got to adapt you see that's the thing about saying things they come back to bite you Red Bull also insisted that they would give

Liam the time to learn grow and develop to morph into the driver that they all believed that he was and that would come in handy in the first round of Melbourne as it was a track that safe for a couple of demo laps in a V8 Supercar he had never driven at before but as any OST relation kid could tell you you do live on this track on video games growing up so he sure as hell knew which way the track went that this was turn one this was turn six and this was the SS

complex will you run over Ducks immediately that weekend it was evident that Red Bull was struggling with the piece of the car but one was struggling more than the other in fp1 Liam was straggling down in 16th before improving on that in fp2 with a 17th placing in fp3 he was sidelined for almost the entire session owing to a car problem when the rat poison finally filtered through the fuel lines and mted his engine that meant that he went into qualifying naked and culminated in him qualifying in 18th Place only ah hit of estan okon

in the snail slow H and OE the bear Bell who didn't even set a lap time at all one red ball at the front one red ball at the back the more things change the more they stay the same this was incredibly alarming and it appeared that after dumping czecho out of the sport and borderline acrimonia circumstances we just got the same old crap that we did before he started the race from the pit Lane and for a while he struggled to get past okon in the damn conditions but even when he did get past

he couldn't seem to re in the Salas of Nik hulkenberg and Gabby boretto if you can't catch up to the born again bernaldi it's no shame because that dude has been really good but you're in a Red Bull and he's in a salver all the while your teammate is up the front and contending for at least a Podium and potentially a win if Lando Norris decided to be himself the star contrast at play was deeply concerning and this all came to a head when in the latter half of the race Liam or the Red Bull

Pit wolf for that matter made the novel mistake of attempting to drive slick tires in a lake Liam gently spun off the track and smashed his gearbox into the wall as an homage to Isaac haar if there was any Silver Lining to this momentous disaster it was that Liam's fastest lap was faster than Max and was second overall only behind Lando but they don't dish points out for this and nor do they for turning your gearbox into dust out of 10 this weekend could be rated as a no but of course he had never driven

around here before so you could use that as some kind of excuse I guess however the next round was in Shanghai and he hadn't driven around here before neither the issue of an experience was compounded by the fact that this was a Sprint weekend which on its own I got beef with but one rant at the time here folks Sprint qualifying came about and Liam was last Stone dead last adding to New Zealand's long laundry list of head hanging moments in Sport come on New Zealand you're better than this in the Sprint itself he did

climb up the pack with some daring moves and honestly it was encouraging to see but she would expect that given the car that he was in it may not have been the best car but surely it's better than these other ones right but after the gimmick race was over the real one began qualifying came about time for Redemption for Liam q1 came to were close and last again I'm dying over here thanks to this Red Bull opted to start Liam from the pit Lane again and once he got out and joined the race he progressed

up the field at the rate of which hairs grow on a chimp scrotum he often found himself battling to either get ahead or get away from Jack Duan in the Alpine he would ultimately come home in 16th Place on the road behind the toroso of haer who he could not reign in in those last few laps despite being marketly faster than Duan who was ultimately penalized for extending the turn 14 happen by about 4 and a half prefectures Liam's 16th Place became 12th after Doan's penalty gaz's disqualification and Ferrari being Ferrari it's also worth noting

that while he did finish ahead of Yuki that came with a mighty fine asterisk firstly both the Alpha's were handicapped due to a bungled strategic call and then later on Yuki's front Wing appeared to Yeet itself out of existence forcing him to pit and throwing him down the pack but nobody was fooled see while the racing bull was looking very very good in the these first couple of races Yuki was definitely driving as if he had a point to prove in other words he was driving as he largely was throughout the last year and a

bit the Yuki of old definitely had some problems but these were largely gone and what we have now is the dude who was in the form of his life and someone who should have been put into that second Red Bull seat from the start instead we had Liam drowning like an Aussie prime minister off for a cold swim sure he was an experienced with the tracks butless we forget there were five other rookies on that grid and none of them struggled as much as need it due to this extraordinarily bad showing the dysphoria around the

motor racing world was quite extreme people questioning what the hell rippel were doing that they fired czecho for this and New Zealand media were pretty quick to note all of this and dispatched one of their two tactics either full copium or a full-on Cena s kill turn although Liam himself is making no excuses saying that his performances were just not good enough and that while he doesn't have enough time to really grow but that's just the reality of Formula 1 and that issue of time is very very real already there are talks of him being

dropped after just two rounds in Lou of Yuki with Liam being dumped back to manat and even the prospect that he would be dumped completely and that the racing ball seat would be taken up by contract journeyman Franco kapino which to be honest I might kind of prefer but even though it's now pretty much now officially confirmed you have got to wonder whether Red Bull should have given Liam one last chance at the third round in Japan because he does have experience around Suzuka in a Formula 1 car and had actually beaten Yuki that day

as a teammate in 2023 it's a circuit that he knows and thus the catchup game would not be as prominent but would that be enough his lack of pace especially in qualifying has largely been down to the lack of confidence in getting his car to behave like a car driving conservatively to tone down the snaps is killing his runs and it is apparent that his inability to understand the nuances of the car is why the gap between he and the Flying Dutchman is so vast and being at a familiar track is not going to totally

extinguish that but this theme of a driver struggling to adapt to a Red Bull is not a new thing this has been going on for years now back in 2019 Pierre gazley was drafted in to fill the void left by Daniel Ricardo despite coming in with High Praise from his toroso stint gastle almost immediately drowned to the point where in Hungary he was lapped by Max with no meating circumstances and so being the tight ship that they is he was promptly dumped after 12 races and iname Alex albon who despite some glimpses of Promise early

on and a couple of podiums also struggled badly in that seat and with czecho having the season of his life at Team stroll in 2020 albon was Ved and czecho was signed for 2021 and this did appear to be a good signing at first but once the Red Bull began to lose form toward the end of 2023 going on 2024 the differences in lap time between the two drivers was becoming too much and even a contract extension was not enough for czecher to regain his Mojo and thus was dumped at the end of the year

in came Liam Lawson and it appears that history is just repeating itself it's been seven seasons now and nothing is changing we know how good G is we know how good albon is we know how good czecho was yet that damn second Red Bull seat seemed to wipe all of our memories and the stin there almost obliterated all of their careers they all struggled with a car that while not built around Max is clearly something that only really he can drive and a lot of the time even he doesn't like it you build a car

to be as fast as it can go but there is a tolerance level to it from the drivers and if Max pen is saying that your car isn't great it's not freaking great you've got a car problem Red Bull to go along with your severe driver mismanagement problem now I'm not too sure who's been in charge of the decisions at that team but a large influence has been from Dr helmet Marco who is living breathing proof that you don't need any discernable talent to keep a job that you're badly out of your depth then take

away his coup of signing Max in 2014 thanks to promising him a Formula 1 seat and what you're left with is a complete mess of a driver development team there has been some good talent come through yes but how and why he selects his drivers is beyond me there's talk of him wanting Kento despite saying that his junior formula results were not that great but then again he didn't have the best teams didn't he you dense melted Old Goat did you not reckon that when he beat your drivers in a lesser team in a summer

series 5 years ago when he was living on budget Ramen and Steven seagar movies most F1 YouTubers out there have deeper wheel knowledge than this guy and do you realize how low that bar is and besides as much as I rate him why even factoring kapito here don't you already have arv lblad you know a driver that you ask for special dispensation for a super license for this whole debacle reeks of mismanagement and it has destroyed careers Nick D re was bought in for 2023 for Alpha based off of one Super Sub race and ended

up getting dumped after 10 races and likely Marco's mind was made up well before that even you then brought back Ricardo only to almost immediately lose faith in the guy if you actually had a brain even if only a small one which beats whatever it is in that Hollow skull of yours you would have put either Liam law or auma aasa in that second Alpha seat for 2023 you would have then had two seasons of comparable results against Yuki to discern who would have been the best option to succeed czecho in 2025 and instead you

took a gamble on someone you looked over in 2023 while the two other drivers that you were so convinced were going to be great you just cast aside almost immediately Mariam Webster has just updated the dictionary you look up fraud and you just see a picture of this guy so Yuki has now been granted that Red Bull seat all in front of his home crowd and genuinely about freaking time and it's kind of remarkable that after all the pissing around that was done toward the end of last season we ended up with a driver lineup

that we should have had in the first place after almost destroying the careers of a driver that you guys had more faith in but while this has been a long time coming quite simply this has to work and not just for one session or one round this has to work on a consistent basis because if Yuki drowns what exactly are the alternatives for Red Bull you go for haar you go for Lim blad kapino exactly how many careers do you want to ruin in vain chasing your tail Yuki is going to have to break the

trend set down by four other drivers that we all knew could drive before they got this poison chalice and the latest is perhaps the most egregious because this is happening two races in to Liam Lawson's tenure he has had no grace period and let's not start pretending that he couldn't drive or that he's forgotten to I've already talked about what he's done in the past especially up against albon and Yuki when they were teammates so I'll save yall the propaganda goshal but let us not also forget what the likes of gazley albon and czecho did

before and after they were in that seat themselves either way the disaster of Liam Lawson definitely wasn't solely down to Red Bull's equivalent of the curse of the Bambino as he himself would admit he just wasn't good enough a humility and self-reflection that quite a few drivers could learn from but I still have faith in the guy that many tragics are already referring to as sosen real imaginative guys well done what next we're going to start calling him laav humor on this platform really has tanked hasn't it but you know that manat looks pretty good

so far and much more manageable than the Red Bull is I mean I don't know going back there could not only help him ReDiscover his form as well as the cure for cancer but could also save his career as a total dropping as widely rumored with regards to Franco Kento could have put an end to it all and please don't let the hate watch blind y'all maybe the demotion to manard will be a bling in Disguise maybe Yuki will Buck the trend and actually push the Flying Dutchman maybe Red Bull will grow some sense and

issue Marco with a one One Way bus ticket to [ __ ] off Phil whatever the future holds for all involved I just hope and pray that we can all collectively behave like grown civil adults now if you'll excuse [Music] me I used to look upon myself as rational and strong and love was just a word in silly s but from that cursed day when you cross my way all my confidence