Liam Lawson stated that the biggest lesson from his early career in Formula 1 was developing mental strength to deal with attacks received on social media. The Racing Bulls driver believes that the difficulties faced in recent years have made him a stronger competitor and also a more prepared person.
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The New Zealander had a hectic start in the category. After replacing Daniel Ricciardo in some races in 2023 and 2024, he secured a seat as a Red Bull Racing full-time driver for 2025, but ended up being transferred to Racing Bulls after just two rounds. Since then, he has frequently appeared in Q3 and scored points.
Besides the challenges on the track, Lawson faced a wave of offensive messages on social media after an incident with Sergio Perez at the 2024 Mexico City GP. The volume of attacks was so large that he decided to delete his social media apps, returning to use them only in 2025 to follow friends’ posts.
Commenting on this period, Lawson highlighted that the psychological aspect was decisive to overcome the situation: “Definitely it was the psychological part. Building that resilience was the biggest thing for me,” he said on the High Performance podcast.
The driver acknowledged that, at first, the criticism affected him much more than he expected: “I cared when I arrived. My phone exploded with messages and I thought: ‘Wow, this is crazy. I wasn’t expecting this’,” he recalled.
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Over time, however, his way of seeing the situation changed completely: “After everything I’ve been through in the last twelve months, I’m in a much better position today. Honestly, I don’t care anymore. It’s easy to think these things are unfair, but I’ve learned to deal with it,” he added.
Lawson also believes that motorsport presents different challenges from other sports. According to him, the large number of factors that influence a driver’s performance can lead to a feeling of bad luck when results don’t come.
Despite this, the New Zealander considers that all these experiences contributed to his evolution: “Looking at everything that happened, I think I’m much better because of it. I’m in a much better place, I’m a better driver and a more complete person, honestly,” Lawson concluded.
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