By James Broughton, August 15, 2025
He says he’s not in F1 to make friends, and Liam “No Friends” Lawson is certainly living up to the nickname—burning bridges at Red Bull with comments about his demotion that veer into conspiracy theory territory. Lawson claims Red Bull offered him the chance to try a “shot in the dark” setup at the 2024 Chinese Grand Prix, supposedly to help him better understand the car.
Already struggling to get to grips with the Red Bull, “No Friends” Lawson found the experiment only cemented his difficulties. After the weekend, “No Friends” Lawson was fired and shipped off to the sister team, Racing Bulls. He now alleges that the China setup was… quite literally, a setup used against him.
I don’t understand how “No Friends” Lawson arrived at this conclusion. Red Bull has spent years overlooking Yuki Tsunoda, so why would they go to all this trouble to demote “No Friends” Lawson—a driver they’d already lost confidence in—just to promote Yuki Tsunoda, in whom they also had… no confidence?
Make it make sense. Okay, we’ll let Lawson take over, as he recently explained in a media interview specifically addressing his theory:
“In China, [2024] we took a shot in the dark with the set-up to try and learn something,”
“For me, I was under the understanding that it was to help me develop for the future, to have an understanding of the car. So I was happy to drive with this sort of set-up.
“That performance was then used to demote me from the team, basically. There were a few things over that time that made it not smooth,. It wasn’t a clean couple of weekends.”
“And by my own standards, they weren’t good enough. I was obviously trying as hard as I could, and I was trying to get up to speed as quickly as I could.”
“As much as I look back now and go, ‘What could I have done to do that better?’, there are obviously things you look back in hindsight and go, ‘I wish that I’d done this differently to try and help me’.”
“If I knew I was going to get two races, I would have probably done things slightly differently. But I didn’t at the time. I was maybe a bit naive, but I thought I was going to get longer and have time to learn.”
Red Bull has traditionally been ruthless when dispensing with drivers who fail to meet their high standards; they act with brutal efficiency. I can’t see the team trying to sabotage a driver they already intend to replace, as they won’t hesitate to act if it serves their interests.
That being said, one should not entirely rule out the possibility. Who knows—when “No Friends” Lawson is done with F1, a sympathetic voice might corroborate his claims. But knowing how Red Bull operates, this seems like a far-fetched argument, and that’s coming from a long-standing critic of the team.
With the ousting of Christian Horner, “No Friends” Lawson is clearly free to point the finger at his former boss without directly naming or shaming him. It’s also an attempt to repair his standing in the sport after clearly struggling at Red Bull and then finding form again at Racing Bulls.