Red Bull promotes Liam Lawson to F1 reserve driver

New Zealand racing driver Liam Lawson is set to become Red Bull Racing’s Formula One reserve driver following the termination of former reserve driver Juri Vips’ Red Bull contract due to an online incident in June.

Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner confirmed that Lawson will be stepping into their F1 team’s reserve driver role.

The 20-year-old has achieved two wins and seven podiums in Formula 2, his most recent at the British Grand Prix where he scored third place in the feature race.

Lawson will also become the reserve driver for Red Bull’s sister team, AlphaTauri.

“Well Liam Lawson steps into that role following the Juri Vips announcement,” said Horner.

“Obviously we’ve got quite a few youngsters and really promising youngsters that are out there at the moment. We’ve got, Liam Lawson, we have Dennis Hauger racing in Formula 2 and then obviously Daruvala who remains a junior driver despite testing with another team.”

“Isack Hadjar is doing a super job as well, so we’ve got no shortage of talent coming through all the way from karting through the different formulae.”

“And that’s always been the policy of Red Bull: to give youth a chance and opportunities to some of these kids that otherwise wouldn’t have been able to progress their careers.”

Lawson will make his next appearance at the coming weekend’s F2 race in Spielberg, Austria on July 8 to 10.