Team principal Frits van Amersfoort has worked with both Liam Lawson and Max Verstappen and explains the one mistake the New Zealander should not make.
Liam Lawson has only eleven Grand Prix starts in Formula 1 under his belt. Nevertheless, Red Bull has promoted him from the Racing Bulls to join world champion Max Verstappen for the 2025 season, putting him in charge of arguably the toughest teammate imaginable.
Frits van Amersfoort has already worked with both drivers in junior categories and, in an exclusive interview with the Dutch edition of Motorsport.com, said he believes Lawson is capable of holding his own alongside Verstappen.
“Of course, a lot has happened since then, and he may have changed as a person. But if there’s one person who has a lot of potential, it’s him,” said the Dutchman, for whose team Lawson drove in the German Formula 4 Championship in 2018.
It was the New Zealander’s first time competing in a European racing series, and he immediately secured three race wins and second place in the championship for Van Amersfoort Racing. “It will be interesting to see how he performs at Red Bull,” said van Amersfoort.
Alongside Verstappen, “there’s no room for anyone else”
“There is – and here the experts agree – a great danger in driving alongside Max. Was Sergio Perez really that bad or was he mentally destroyed? Or did he perhaps destroy himself mentally? That’s hard for me to judge as an outsider.”
“But I speak from experience when I say that the Verstappens are not the easiest. They basically leave no room for anyone else,” says the Dutchman, for whom both father Jos and later son Max have driven over the years.
Max Verstappen competed for Van Amersfoort Racing in the 2014 European Formula 3 Championship, taking ten victories and third place in the championship. He was then promoted to Formula 1 with Red Bull at just 17 years old, driving for Toro Rosso.
“It’s a minefield for Liam, but of course you can’t refuse an offer to drive for Red Bull Racing,” says van Amersfoort, who hopes that Lawson will do as Verstappen did. After all, Red Bull threw him in at the deep end back then too.
No ‘puppy love’ for Lawson at Red Bull
“The pressure to perform will be enormous from day one,” warns the team boss, explaining, “If [Liam] is smart, he will accept that he has to play second fiddle for a while at the beginning.” He should therefore not try to beat Verstappen right from the first race.
Rather, he hopes “that Liam and Max develop a relationship in which they help each other instead of working against each other.” And by the way, Red Bull itself does not expect Lawson to perform at the same level as Verstappen right away.
“We don’t expect him to win, but he should score points regularly and be closer to Max than Checo [Perez] was. 0.2 to 0.3 seconds would be a satisfactory window,” Helmut Marko told Sport Bild.
If he can’t do that, then Lawson won’t “enjoy any puppy love,” the Austrian also makes clear – thus confirming van Amersfoort’s statement about the pressure to perform at Red Bull.
