- Liam Lawson, 24, says he has no assurance about his Racing Bulls seat for 2027, per Sky Sports F1, even as he sits ninth in the championship with 83 points after Mexico.
- Red Bull junior Nikola Tsolov, 19, ran one tenth behind rookie Arvid Lindblad on his first F1 practice outing, and Racing Bulls CEO Peter Bayer called the performance superb.
- Karun Chandhok, a former F1 driver turned pundit, says dropping Lawson would rank among the most unjust sackings in F1, with the Sao Paulo weekend opening Friday and Racing Bulls yet to confirm either of its 2027 drivers.
Racing Bulls Has Announced Nothing for 2027 While Lawson Waits and Tsolov Impresses
Liam Lawson drove from the pit lane to seventh place in the Mexico City Grand Prix, scored points for Racing Bulls, and then met a question about next season that he could not answer. The 24 year old from New Zealand gave the answer he had.
“There’s definitely no assurance at the moment [for next year]. It’s a tough sport. Right now, I don’t know what else to say, really.”
He opened that answer with a defense of his effort. “I’m trying my best. Every weekend I’m trying to maximise,” Lawson said, and he followed it with a line about the weekend that had just finished: “In Mexico I gave it everything.”
The silence around 2027 belongs to Racing Bulls alone. It is the only team on the grid that has not officially confirmed either of its drivers for next season. Red Bull has settled its pairing with Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar, who signed a contract extension in September. Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren have their lineups. At Racing Bulls, the 2027 column is a pair of question marks, and the driver with the stronger claim to one of them has just told the paddock he cannot say what comes next.
A Season the Midfield Leaned On
Lawson sits ninth in the drivers’ championship with 83 points after Mexico, which makes him the highest placed midfield driver. Only the Mercedes, McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull drivers stand ahead of him. His 83 points are more than double the total of Lindblad, his rookie teammate. As of November 2, Racing Bulls held a comfortable fifth place in the constructors’ championship.
The Mexico race itself carried the season in miniature. His weekend there included a practice collision with Verstappen and a disqualification from qualifying, and he still climbed from the pit lane to seventh. Verstappen won that race ahead of Lewis Hamilton, and Kimi Antonelli took third place and with it his first world championship.
Lawson knows the other side of the Red Bull pyramid better than anyone on the Racing Bulls roster. Red Bull demoted him after two races in 2025. In September, when Hadjar’s wrist injury opened a seat, Lawson returned to the senior team for his second Red Bull stint, covering three races and scoring points in two of them. Then Hadjar came back and Lawson went back to Racing Bulls.
Chandhok, who drove for Hispania and Lotus, describes the emotional cost of that history in direct terms. “He’s come back carrying the mental baggage of being sacked from the Red Bull top team, went back into the Red Bull car for those three races and did a good job there, and he’s delivered really, really well.”
The Teenager in His Car
Nikola Tsolov is the name that explains why Lawson was asked the question at all. The Bulgarian is 19 and highly rated at Red Bull. He finished runner-up in Formula 3 last year and is chasing the Formula 2 title in his rookie season in that category, which makes him one of the protagonists of this year’s F2 fight.
Tsolov made his F1 practice debut in Mexico, in Lawson’s place with Racing Bulls. It was his first time in the car, and he ended one tenth behind Lindblad, a rookie teammate of Lawson who has raced in F1 all season.
Bayer, the Racing Bulls CEO, spoke about the debut with Austrian broadcaster ORF. He called Tsolov’s Friday performance superb, pointed out that it was the driver’s first time in the car, and said the teenager had slotted into the team without a hitch. On the driver decision, he said Tsolov “put in a fantastic performance.”
Bayer did not say Lawson would go, and he did not say Tsolov would arrive. The praise for the teenager came in the same interview as the question about Lawson’s future.
What Bayer Said and What He Left Open
Asked whether Lawson has done everything he can to keep his place for 2027, Bayer gave an answer that sounds like a yes before it turns. “That’s the general consensus in the paddock.”
Then he turned to the wider mission. “At the same time, our role, as the leading developer of talent in Formula 1, is to continuously bring new drivers through. We’ve brought 22 drivers into Formula 1, including the likes of Sebastian Vettel, Max Verstappen and others.”
Bayer’s list says a lot about the team’s purpose. Racing Bulls sits inside the Red Bull system as a developer of young drivers, and Bayer put that role on the table in the same interview as his compliment to Lawson. He then handed the call to team principal Alan Permane, who will make it, or announce it, “when he feels the time is right.” Bayer and Permane “chatted about that briefly on Saturday.”
Other teams have already acted on rookies. Haas, which had signed Formula 2 championship leader Rafael Camara to replace Esteban Ocon in 2027, has now dropped Ocon for the rest of this season and will give Camara his F1 debut at Sao Paulo, a rise the site traced in Rafael Camara’s route to Haas. Racing Bulls has confirmed nothing, and three names compete for its two seats: Lawson, Lindblad and Tsolov.
One of the Most Unjust Sackings in F1
Chandhok put his position on record after the Mexico City weekend. “If Liam Lawson gets sacked from the seat, it’ll be one of the most unjust sackings in F1,” he said, and he built his argument on the team’s identity. Chandhok acknowledged that “the junior team is there as a university to prepare guys for the top team,” and then argued that Racing Bulls today is a strong midfield team with its own sponsors and its own reasons to be competitive.
He rejected the idea that the data could point the other way. “I just don’t see how they can have any data that suggests that Tsolov is a better option than Liam Lawson. But we’ll see.”
Jamie Chadwick, the multiple W Series champion, offered Red Bull a middle road. She noted that Red Bull still holds an option on Tsolov for next year and could place him in Super Formula as a reserve driver, keeping him inside its stable while Lawson stays at Racing Bulls and the team continues to monitor options. “Do they need to make that decision imminently? In my opinion, no.” Oscar Piastri spent a year on the sidelines as a reserve driver before he emerged on the grid, an example that backs her case.
Chadwick did not dismiss the risk of waiting. She pointed to Mercedes, which had few options when Lewis Hamilton left and put Kimi Antonelli in the car, a gamble that has paid off, though it was a gamble. If Red Bull believes it has found a driver who could be the next Verstappen, she said, that is a decision it has to make.
A Weekend With the Question Still Open
Racing Bulls goes to Interlagos with nothing announced. The Sao Paulo Grand Prix is round 20 of the 2026 season and the third race of the American triple header that began in Austin and moved through Mexico City. First practice for the Sao Paulo Grand Prix runs Friday at 3:30pm GMT, second practice follows at 7pm, qualifying follows on Saturday at 6pm, and the race starts Sunday at 5pm. None of those sessions has been run, and each one is a chance for the drivers to add to the case they make for 2027.
Permane holds the call, and Bayer said he will announce it when he feels the time is right. Until Permane speaks, Lawson has told everyone exactly where he stands: he gave it everything in Mexico, he has no assurance, and he has no more to say.
