As Liam Lawson begins his new Formula One era with Racing Bulls, a new challenge has arisen if he’s to get back into Red Bull’s senior team for 2026.
The 23-year-old claimed 17th place in Formula One’s Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka over the weekend after a pit stop gamble did not reap the rewards they had hoped for.
He was bested by his teammate, Formula One rookie Isack Hadjar, who took home eighth place on his third outing for the squad, also beating out Lawson’s replacement Yuki Tsunoda.
Former Williams Team Manager Peter Windsor told Mike Hosking that we can expect to see a lot more of the old Lawson as the season continues, but whether he’ll be good enought to be Hadjar is another matter.
He says you have to be impressed with Hadjar – he was showing up a lot of very experienced racing drivers.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The good news from the F one is we're in
the middle of a three header Japan last weekend. Of course,
this weekend we're heading to bah Rain before we hit
to Sadi next weekend. The thinking is it gives Liam
Lawson time to adjust to the new car as well
as dealing with the tracks he knows. Of course, we
promise to get Peter Winsor back on. He's a former
Williams team manager when they won both the constructors and
the driver's championships, so he's next. Bert in the field
knows what he's talking about. He's with us once again
(00:22):
from from Spain. Peter Windsor morning, Good morning to you.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Thanks thanks for having me on the show. Not at all.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Let's start with our obsession in this part of the world,
the Liam's story. How much of last weekend was him?
How much was the strategy? How much was the car?
Do you think?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I think so it was him? Act The only yardstick
you have is your teammate. In Formula one, there's two
cars in every team, they're both basically identical, and you've
got to judge what you're doing alongside the guy you
don't want to be beaten by. Is your teammate bottom line,
and although Liam could take a little bit of satisf actually,
(01:00):
I think from out qualifying Yuki Sonoda who was in
the A team, that they are different cars, as as
Liam well knows. And then his only yardstick was iszak
Haja in the in the B team, and Izak sadly
looked a lot better than Liam all weekend.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Can we cut Liam some slack given he's reacquainting himself
with the car, and I look at somebody like Carlos,
for example, who's still struggling with there's Williams, and maybe
give him a couple of more weekends before we make
that direct comparison or not.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I think I think you can say that Cep goes on,
Liam will drive better and better and we'll see a
lot of the old Liam that we saw last year.
Whether or not that Liam is now going to be
good enough to beat his teammate is zak Haja, who's
a driver of enormous talent quite clearly, is another matter.
(01:50):
So there's a two different answers really, and I think
you have to take into account that Suzuka is a
driver's circuit. It's a circuit where a driver can part
more into the car than he can. For example, in
Bahrain that where we're racing this weekend and on that
circuit as a rookie is like Agile was unbelievably good,
(02:11):
and that's something Liam needs to be really focused on.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Let me come back to that. In the moment, Helmet
Marco suggested that Liam needs to score some points this
weekend and next. Is that fair or is that the
old red bull pressure?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Well, it's fair, but it's kind of stating the obvious,
isn't it. I think Liam, like your racing drab. It
goes into every Grand Prix knowing that they've got the
score points and wanted to score points. So there's nothing
new there, and all Marco is doing is just stating
the obvious that you know, it would make sense if
Liam had said, actually, I don't think I want to
score any points in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. I'm not
(02:45):
going to go for the points at all. I mean,
then you could possibly say, yeah, Helmet Marco's comment makes sense.
But Liam is not saying that any more than anybody
else would ever say that, So I don't really understand
what it's all about. Obviously, Liam's giving it one hundred
percent every weekend, doing the best he can. But I'd
say it's very lost at the moment because you know,
the season started badly with the A team and now
(03:06):
with this young rookie alongside him, he's getting blown away
and that's a big problem.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
You're speaking so well of Hedger, Hedger, I wonder if
he's flying slightly under the radar, because if you want
to talk about talented rookies, Antonelli seems to be getting
all the headlines.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Well incorrectly so because Antonelli is in a factory Mercedes
and you know he should be doing that. Well, it's
a very good car. But if you look at where
the other other B team, you know, the Racing Bulls is,
where is it. It's in the hands of Liam Lawson.
And look what is zak Haja is doing with it?
That isak Haja's performance actually was much more meritorious than
(03:39):
Kimi Antonelli's in opinion in Japan for sure. And obviously
the Mercedes is a better car. It's a better team,
huge budget, whole huge operation. This is the Bee Red team,
you know, Red Bull be team. So you know you've
got to be nothing but impressed with isac Haja. He
was a great driver to walks. And it's not only
the el, it's the way he drives. I mean the
(04:03):
way he was showing up a lot of very very experienced,
very very good racing drivers. I've been looking at a
picture today of him when he was leading Lewis Hamilton
at one point, and he's got his car in such
a nice position compared with Lewis going up through the
es and that sort of detail you would not expect
of a rookie, to be honest, and that's another problem
(04:25):
for Lin. Now, this guy is really good.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Is he so good that if Sonoda isn't he's the
third player for red Bull this season? Or is that
just too crazy?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Oh? I think Red Bull would already be thinking, Wow,
we've got somebody very special here and great that he's
going to do a year now in the B team,
but we need to be thinking about him for the
A team next year. Yeah, I'm sure already they'll be
thinking that.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
I'll tell you what it's exciting to tell me if
I'm wrong. But the season so far is brilliant. This
is this McLaren thing we saw in Japan, and presumably
it's going to be a talking point in Bahrain this
weekend as well, these papaya rules and what you do
with pstre and who's got bit of pace? And do
you you chase down the step and was that a mistake?
Did they blow that?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
In my opinion they did because I think there's a
lot of downside in running two very quick drivers in
a team because it detracts from one driver. If you've
got a Lando Norris, you don't really need somebody as
good as Oscar in the other car, and vice versa.
You put somebody is a little bit easier to handle,
somebody like say Daniel Ricardo would have. It was a
perfect teammate to Lando, but they went this route of
(05:26):
having somebody very very quick in the other car and
there are a lot of downsides and he took points
from Lando last year for sure. If the upside is
that in the situation they were in Japan, there was
a perfect situation there for McLaren to say to Lando, Okay,
let Oscar pass. We're going to give him twenty laps
(05:46):
to wear down Max, and we'll tell him to let
you get in front again towards the end race. You
can win the race. But he's going to he's got
more in his car at the moment, he can push
Max a bit harder or get Max to use up
his tires and then New Lando can win the race.
That would have been a really clever strategy and we
could easily have done that, but they didn't. They just
(06:07):
let them both sit there and they were like sort
of rabbit called in the headlight, didn't know what to do,
and they were just both going around. You know. Obviously
Oscar wanted to get to up the pace. Lando was
sort of mesmerized into thinking that Max might make some
sort of mistake or something. I didn't want to get
too close to him because it's dirty air and it
damages the front tires, et cetera, and the front wing.
(06:29):
And so they went round and round and round, and
it was it was a lost opportunity for McLaren. Yet again,
if you're going to have two quick guys, use.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Them, it makes sense. Listen, tell me a different what's
different this week in right in terms of the track
because a lot of people he contacted the program, a
lot of New IF one fans in the country were
all fizzed about lie and were all on board. But
they said last week in Suzuka was boring. Might be
a great track, but what a boring race, what a precision?
What's different this week?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
In Well, First of all, I would say it was
a crawling race because although there were very few overtakes,
it was non stop tension and defense and attack. It
was a wonderful race. So that's the first thing to
realize about the Japanese Japanese Grand Prix bah Rain easier
to overtake, There'll be a lot more overtaking. People will
probably say it's more exciting in that sense. It's a
bit banal, bit sort of you know, in your face,
(07:16):
not really finesse as a circuit. There's one really nice
section of road turn nine, turn ten. The rest of
it's fairly basic, and even an averagely good racing driver
will be pretty quick around there, so you'll see the
grid very close, very competitive. Liam will be very near
is Zach Hadja there. I suspect he might even be
(07:38):
quicker than Hadja there. It's not a circuit where it's
particularly demanding in any area apart from turns nine and ten,
and they really only come into play during the race
when the tis are going away. Then that corner becomes
a great corner. But in terms of qualifying, it'll be
defined by the performance of the cars, which cars have
got the most efficient downforce, and you'll see them pairing
(07:59):
up on the grid, the two you know, the two
racing balls, probably the two McLaren's, the two Merks, the
two Ferraris. They'll be very near one another. There's not
a lot of drivers can do that. It's not a
driver's circuit really. Apart from that nine to ten section.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Have you got a sense of the season yet, Peter,
drivers versus constructors any clue or are we still guessing?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Oh? I think the season? So the season is McLaren
for sure have the best package that probably will have
the best package all year. There will be racist when
they get it wrong, but it's going to be their
championship to lose. Certainly they're going to win the constructors championship.
I'd say. The only thing, of course, is that Max
is just a much better, not much better, but a
better racing driver than both Lando and Oscar, and a
(08:41):
good racing driver in an average car probably about thirty
percent time in the season can do something. You know,
when it's wet or it's a circuit like Suzuka, or
there's a lot of wind or something else comes into play,
then a guy like Max can do what he can do.
But in terms of a straight fight, McLaren by far
and have the best car at the moment, the best package,
(09:02):
and it's difficult to see that changing as the season progresses.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
You've been around a long time and hung out with
a lot of really really good drivers. Where do you
put the stepping and the grand scheme of things?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Well, I put him right up there with the very best.
I think that the era in which he races I
call it the two pedal era. It's the era in
which we no longer have a manual gear shift in
the car, the type that At and Senna used. We
don't have a clutch pedal. It's just two pedals, accelerator
and a break. Michael Schumacher was in the middle of
the transition to that era, but Max has only known
(09:35):
that era. He's probably never changed gear with a clutch
in his life. I wouldn't have thought so in that
two pedal era, I would say he is the best
driver now for sure. I think Lewis has kind of
lost the plot at the moment in terms of where
he's going with the car and how to drive the car.
And Charlotte Clerk's not far away from Max. I thought
he drove beautifully at the weekend sensational drive by Butt Blerk.
(09:58):
But he's a bit more emotional it more. You know,
he's grown up with the whole Ferrari thing. He's French,
you know, he's very prone to all the historyonics and
the emotion that comes with that, whereas Max has had
like this copybook career where he's just gone into this
beautiful team Red Bull, which is a great race team,
and he's Dutch, and he's calm, and he's very simple
in the way he goes racing. He doesn't over complicate it,
(10:20):
he doesn't let the data dominate the way he thinks.
He thinks like a racing driver, racing in italics, as
I think from a professional Formula one driver. And I
think most of the young guys out there aspire these
days to be professional Formula one drivers. And that's the mistake.
They made too much data, too much information, not enough
gut feel.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Exactly, Peter, Always a pleasure, appreciate it. We'll get you
back on again. Peter Wins, a former Williams team manager
out of spaying this morning. By the way, he does
a very good podcast called Short Corners. It's a highly
detailed you can be down a rabbit hole there the
Minuti I and if it's for the lovers of bit
of one. So he's got that Short Corners. He's got
a YouTube channel called Peter as well. Surely, Mike, we
(11:02):
want passing in a Grand Prix, not a procession. Yeah,
it was interesting. He said that it's like it I
liken it to five day cricket. You know, the people
who are passionate about five day cricket get it, whereas
those of us who don't get it look on and go, well,
what the hell he's spending five days for? And a
lot of the drivers in fact post Japan said what
a procession? How boring it was. But for the officionado,
the subtlety and nuance, pit strategy, tires, et cetera. What
(11:26):
was going on Japan was interesting, but for the wider
world not so much. Good to have them on the program.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to
news Talks it'd be from six am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.
The good news from the F one is we're in
the middle of a three header Japan last weekend. Of course,
this weekend we're heading to bah Rain before we hit
to Sadi next weekend. The thinking is it gives Liam
Lawson time to adjust to the new car as well
as dealing with the tracks he knows. Of course, we
promise to get Peter Winsor back on. He's a former
Williams team manager when they won both the constructors and
the driver's championships, so he's next. Bert in the field
knows what he's talking about. He's with us once again
(00:22):
from from Spain. Peter Windsor morning, Good morning to you.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Thanks thanks for having me on the show. Not at all.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Let's start with our obsession in this part of the world,
the Liam's story. How much of last weekend was him?
How much was the strategy? How much was the car?
Do you think?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I think so it was him? Act The only yardstick
you have is your teammate. In Formula one, there's two
cars in every team, they're both basically identical, and you've
got to judge what you're doing alongside the guy you
don't want to be beaten by. Is your teammate bottom line,
and although Liam could take a little bit of satisf actually,
(01:00):
I think from out qualifying Yuki Sonoda who was in
the A team, that they are different cars, as as
Liam well knows. And then his only yardstick was iszak
Haja in the in the B team, and Izak sadly
looked a lot better than Liam all weekend.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Can we cut Liam some slack given he's reacquainting himself
with the car, and I look at somebody like Carlos,
for example, who's still struggling with there's Williams, and maybe
give him a couple of more weekends before we make
that direct comparison or not.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I think I think you can say that Cep goes on,
Liam will drive better and better and we'll see a
lot of the old Liam that we saw last year.
Whether or not that Liam is now going to be
good enough to beat his teammate is zak Haja, who's
a driver of enormous talent quite clearly, is another matter.
(01:50):
So there's a two different answers really, and I think
you have to take into account that Suzuka is a
driver's circuit. It's a circuit where a driver can part
more into the car than he can. For example, in
Bahrain that where we're racing this weekend and on that
circuit as a rookie is like Agile was unbelievably good,
(02:11):
and that's something Liam needs to be really focused on.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Let me come back to that. In the moment, Helmet
Marco suggested that Liam needs to score some points this
weekend and next. Is that fair or is that the
old red bull pressure?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Well, it's fair, but it's kind of stating the obvious,
isn't it. I think Liam, like your racing drab. It
goes into every Grand Prix knowing that they've got the
score points and wanted to score points. So there's nothing
new there, and all Marco is doing is just stating
the obvious that you know, it would make sense if
Liam had said, actually, I don't think I want to
score any points in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. I'm not
(02:45):
going to go for the points at all. I mean,
then you could possibly say, yeah, Helmet Marco's comment makes sense.
But Liam is not saying that any more than anybody
else would ever say that, So I don't really understand
what it's all about. Obviously, Liam's giving it one hundred
percent every weekend, doing the best he can. But I'd
say it's very lost at the moment because you know,
the season started badly with the A team and now
(03:06):
with this young rookie alongside him, he's getting blown away
and that's a big problem.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
You're speaking so well of Hedger, Hedger, I wonder if
he's flying slightly under the radar, because if you want
to talk about talented rookies, Antonelli seems to be getting
all the headlines.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Well incorrectly so because Antonelli is in a factory Mercedes
and you know he should be doing that. Well, it's
a very good car. But if you look at where
the other other B team, you know, the Racing Bulls is,
where is it. It's in the hands of Liam Lawson.
And look what is zak Haja is doing with it?
That isak Haja's performance actually was much more meritorious than
(03:39):
Kimi Antonelli's in opinion in Japan for sure. And obviously
the Mercedes is a better car. It's a better team,
huge budget, whole huge operation. This is the Bee Red team,
you know, Red Bull be team. So you know you've
got to be nothing but impressed with isac Haja. He
was a great driver to walks. And it's not only
the el, it's the way he drives. I mean the
(04:03):
way he was showing up a lot of very very experienced,
very very good racing drivers. I've been looking at a
picture today of him when he was leading Lewis Hamilton
at one point, and he's got his car in such
a nice position compared with Lewis going up through the
es and that sort of detail you would not expect
of a rookie, to be honest, and that's another problem
(04:25):
for Lin. Now, this guy is really good.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Is he so good that if Sonoda isn't he's the
third player for red Bull this season? Or is that
just too crazy?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Oh? I think Red Bull would already be thinking, Wow,
we've got somebody very special here and great that he's
going to do a year now in the B team,
but we need to be thinking about him for the
A team next year. Yeah, I'm sure already they'll be
thinking that.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
I'll tell you what it's exciting to tell me if
I'm wrong. But the season so far is brilliant. This
is this McLaren thing we saw in Japan, and presumably
it's going to be a talking point in Bahrain this
weekend as well, these papaya rules and what you do
with pstre and who's got bit of pace? And do
you you chase down the step and was that a mistake?
Did they blow that?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
In my opinion they did because I think there's a
lot of downside in running two very quick drivers in
a team because it detracts from one driver. If you've
got a Lando Norris, you don't really need somebody as
good as Oscar in the other car, and vice versa.
You put somebody is a little bit easier to handle,
somebody like say Daniel Ricardo would have. It was a
perfect teammate to Lando, but they went this route of
(05:26):
having somebody very very quick in the other car and
there are a lot of downsides and he took points
from Lando last year for sure. If the upside is
that in the situation they were in Japan, there was
a perfect situation there for McLaren to say to Lando, Okay,
let Oscar pass. We're going to give him twenty laps
(05:46):
to wear down Max, and we'll tell him to let
you get in front again towards the end race. You
can win the race. But he's going to he's got
more in his car at the moment, he can push
Max a bit harder or get Max to use up
his tires and then New Lando can win the race.
That would have been a really clever strategy and we
could easily have done that, but they didn't. They just
(06:07):
let them both sit there and they were like sort
of rabbit called in the headlight, didn't know what to do,
and they were just both going around. You know. Obviously
Oscar wanted to get to up the pace. Lando was
sort of mesmerized into thinking that Max might make some
sort of mistake or something. I didn't want to get
too close to him because it's dirty air and it
damages the front tires, et cetera, and the front wing.
(06:29):
And so they went round and round and round, and
it was it was a lost opportunity for McLaren. Yet again,
if you're going to have two quick guys, use.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Them, it makes sense. Listen, tell me a different what's
different this week in right in terms of the track
because a lot of people he contacted the program, a
lot of New IF one fans in the country were
all fizzed about lie and were all on board. But
they said last week in Suzuka was boring. Might be
a great track, but what a boring race, what a precision?
What's different this week?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
In Well, First of all, I would say it was
a crawling race because although there were very few overtakes,
it was non stop tension and defense and attack. It
was a wonderful race. So that's the first thing to
realize about the Japanese Japanese Grand Prix bah Rain easier
to overtake, There'll be a lot more overtaking. People will
probably say it's more exciting in that sense. It's a
bit banal, bit sort of you know, in your face,
(07:16):
not really finesse as a circuit. There's one really nice
section of road turn nine, turn ten. The rest of
it's fairly basic, and even an averagely good racing driver
will be pretty quick around there, so you'll see the
grid very close, very competitive. Liam will be very near
is Zach Hadja there. I suspect he might even be
(07:38):
quicker than Hadja there. It's not a circuit where it's
particularly demanding in any area apart from turns nine and ten,
and they really only come into play during the race
when the tis are going away. Then that corner becomes
a great corner. But in terms of qualifying, it'll be
defined by the performance of the cars, which cars have
got the most efficient downforce, and you'll see them pairing
(07:59):
up on the grid, the two you know, the two
racing balls, probably the two McLaren's, the two Merks, the
two Ferraris. They'll be very near one another. There's not
a lot of drivers can do that. It's not a
driver's circuit really. Apart from that nine to ten section.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Have you got a sense of the season yet, Peter,
drivers versus constructors any clue or are we still guessing?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Oh? I think the season? So the season is McLaren
for sure have the best package that probably will have
the best package all year. There will be racist when
they get it wrong, but it's going to be their
championship to lose. Certainly they're going to win the constructors championship.
I'd say. The only thing, of course, is that Max
is just a much better, not much better, but a
better racing driver than both Lando and Oscar, and a
(08:41):
good racing driver in an average car probably about thirty
percent time in the season can do something. You know,
when it's wet or it's a circuit like Suzuka, or
there's a lot of wind or something else comes into play,
then a guy like Max can do what he can do.
But in terms of a straight fight, McLaren by far
and have the best car at the moment, the best package,
(09:02):
and it's difficult to see that changing as the season progresses.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
You've been around a long time and hung out with
a lot of really really good drivers. Where do you
put the stepping and the grand scheme of things?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Well, I put him right up there with the very best.
I think that the era in which he races I
call it the two pedal era. It's the era in
which we no longer have a manual gear shift in
the car, the type that At and Senna used. We
don't have a clutch pedal. It's just two pedals, accelerator
and a break. Michael Schumacher was in the middle of
the transition to that era, but Max has only known
(09:35):
that era. He's probably never changed gear with a clutch
in his life. I wouldn't have thought so in that
two pedal era, I would say he is the best
driver now for sure. I think Lewis has kind of
lost the plot at the moment in terms of where
he's going with the car and how to drive the car.
And Charlotte Clerk's not far away from Max. I thought
he drove beautifully at the weekend sensational drive by Butt Blerk.
(09:58):
But he's a bit more emotional it more. You know,
he's grown up with the whole Ferrari thing. He's French,
you know, he's very prone to all the historyonics and
the emotion that comes with that, whereas Max has had
like this copybook career where he's just gone into this
beautiful team Red Bull, which is a great race team,
and he's Dutch, and he's calm, and he's very simple
in the way he goes racing. He doesn't over complicate it,
(10:20):
he doesn't let the data dominate the way he thinks.
He thinks like a racing driver, racing in italics, as
I think from a professional Formula one driver. And I
think most of the young guys out there aspire these
days to be professional Formula one drivers. And that's the mistake.
They made too much data, too much information, not enough
gut feel.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Exactly, Peter, Always a pleasure, appreciate it. We'll get you
back on again. Peter Wins, a former Williams team manager
out of spaying this morning. By the way, he does
a very good podcast called Short Corners. It's a highly
detailed you can be down a rabbit hole there the
Minuti I and if it's for the lovers of bit
of one. So he's got that Short Corners. He's got
a YouTube channel called Peter as well. Surely, Mike, we
(11:02):
want passing in a Grand Prix, not a procession. Yeah,
it was interesting. He said that it's like it I
liken it to five day cricket. You know, the people
who are passionate about five day cricket get it, whereas
those of us who don't get it look on and go, well,
what the hell he's spending five days for? And a
lot of the drivers in fact post Japan said what
a procession? How boring it was. But for the officionado,
the subtlety and nuance, pit strategy, tires, et cetera. What
(11:26):
was going on Japan was interesting, but for the wider
world not so much. Good to have them on the program.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to
news Talks it'd be from six am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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The Bobby Bones Show
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