2023 saw the explosive debut of Oscar Piastri. Many have already touted the 22-year-old as a guaranteed future championship prospect, after the Aussie delivered in what can arguably termed as one of the greatest rookie seasons ever. Now, acknowledging Piastri’s rise to the top of F1, AlphaTauri’s CEO, Peter Bayer has confirmed that Liam Lawson and other Red Bull juniors will be put through the same ‘regime‘ before they are handed a full-time F1 seat.
Bayer told Autosport (as quoted by Motorsportweek.com), “I think Oscar Piastri is the best example. He ran I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of miles with Alpine, but he came in and he understood the car. He understood the dynamics, he understood the switches, and it makes such a big difference, and so it connects you fully.”
Now, Bayer has confessed he intends to put Lawson through the same process before giving him a proper F1 seat. That being said, the young Kiwi already showed his potential during 2023 when he stepped into temporarily to replace an injured Daniel Ricciardo. A highlight was his first points of the season being scored at the notoriously challenging Singapore GP.
Analyzing Bayer’s words gives us a picture that Lawson will be inducted more intensely into the testing and development side of the team in the future. This would prepare him for that eventual F1 berth and his extensive experience working with and on F1 machinery would eliminate the ‘breaking-in‘ period.
Bayer in the past has said he feels a young driver needs at least three years to be ready for F1. Does that mean Lawson would also have to wait for that long?
Will Liam Lawson follow in Oscar Piastri’s footsteps?
For 2024, Lawson will be a reserve driver for Red Bull and its sister team. With no racing options for 2024, his situation is similar to that of Piastri, back in 2022. The question that beckons is if the young New Zealander would follow the footsteps of Piastri and make headlines, for all the wrong reasons.
With a solid stint as an ad hoc replacement driver for AlphaTauri, Lawson has turned quite a few heads in the paddock. And if the Bulls are not ready to offer him a seat, there are potentially other teams that will be willing to offer Lawson a full-time role.
If any rival team makes an offer to Lawson that he cannot refuse, then, this could potentially trigger a very intense silly season in F1 as the driver marker would explode. That being said, whilst Piastri ditched a midtable Alpine to move on to McLaren, given Red Bull’s dominant supremacy at the top of the sport, it seems unlikely that an academy protégé would do the same to them.
