Liam Lawson, RB, Zandvoort, 2024

2024 Formula 1 driver rankings #16: Liam Lawson

Formula 1

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It’s entirely understandable that many questioned Red Bull’s decision to place their faith in Liam Lawson instead of Yuki Tsunoda when it came to choosing their second driver for the upcoming season. After all, Tsunoda’s results during their brief spell as team mates were quantifiably better, which is why Lawson appears lower down our ranking.

But it’s not hard to see why, on the strength of their performances during 2024, Red Bull perceived more potential in Lawson. Given his relative lack of experience (11 grand prix starts to Tsunoda’s 87 by the end of the season), he showed impressive pace on his second spell in F1 and real mettle in wheel-to-wheel combat.

Lawson came out of the blocks strongly when he reappeared as Tsunoda’s team mate at the United States Grand Prix. Despite not having contested a race in any category for almost a year, and having to start on the back row in the grand prix due to a power unit change, Lawson made a superb getaway and managed his hard tyres superbly over the first stint to vault into the points-scoring places.

He repeated that result in Brazil, one place behind Tsunoda, both acquitting themselves well in the demanding wet weather conditions. This was as good as it got for Lawson in his half-dozen grands prix, most of which took place on tracks he hadn’t previously raced at.

Liam Lawson

Best Worst
GP start 5 19
GP finish 9 (x2) 17
Points 4

Although he was invariably out-qualified by Tsunoda, the gap was razor-thin on several occasions. But what seemed to impress Red Bull most was Lawson’s zeal for combat.

Several of his more experienced rivals took exception to this. Fernando Alonso was thoroughly unimpressed with Lawson after the Austin sprint race, though his displeasure seemed to be triggered by the RB driver’s failure to keep Esteban Ocon’s Alpine behind having rebuffed the Aston Martin so thoroughly.

But the driver Lawson truly infuriated, even before he nabbed his Red Bull drive, was Sergio Perez. Lawson thoroughly showed up the driver whose place he has taken when they crossed swords, most notably in Perez’s backyard, where the Red Bull driver raged impotently against Lawson’s uncompromising and effective defence. After that it was little surprise to see Lawson get the call from the top team.

RaceFans’ driver rankings are based partly on the scores awarded to drivers for their performances in each round as well as other factors.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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6 comments on “2024 Formula 1 driver rankings #16: Liam Lawson”

  1. Mmm, the last time the driver ratings average was included in the article (brazil), the bottom drivers were: sargeant, perez, stroll, zhou, ricciardo, so apart from colapinto and lawson, who only joined late in the season, so far they’ve been in order; I’m guessing the first difference for a full time driver will be hamilton, since I don’t think anyone expects him to be the next coming up after tsunoda, even with a pretty bad season by his standards, I think he’s gonna be around the top 10.

    So far pretty much agree with all the rankings, and I’m guessing tsunoda\bottas should be coming up very soon.

    1. As for red bull’s decision, I personally thought trying tsunoda would’ve made more sense: he did better, was more experienced and they could’ve told him “it’s a make or break year for you”, meanwhile lawson could get more experience at toro rosso and if tsunoda wasn’t up to par they could’ve swapped them, this way they’re letting lawson gain experience at red bull, which isn’t exactly a quiet place for that.

  2. Tsunoda is a known level of performance whereas Lawson has the potential to push on. Definitely doesn’t always happen and i’d have gone for neither of them if i was Horner but for the credibility of the 2nd RB team as a feeder it made sense. Id have gone for Alonso but maybe thats just for ‘popcorn’ reasons

  3. Definitely less impressive than his races in 2023, but probably because he was eager to show he could take Perez’s seat and it led to some clumsy moves.

    1. I’m struggling to remember a clumsy move from Lawson’s side, he was aggressive for sure thats about it. I personally didn’t see any incident as Lawson’s fault, they were 50/50 and I’d even go as far as blaming his opponents slightly for not providing racing space and trying to run him off track. As for pure performance he was a step better in 2024 than 2023. I’m 100% sure if you compared the data it would show that.

      The only questionable/negative thing he did was flipping Checo off. Even if Checo was deliberately slowing him down as retribution for the clash it was unnecessary and he did apologise as he should have.

      1. Do you recall Qatar where he lost control and smashed into Bottas?

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