My parents sold their house so I could keep racing

It has taken plenty of patience and an agonising wait on the sidelines, but Liam Lawson can finally call himself a full-time Formula 1 driver.

On Thursday Red Bull and sister team RB confirmed one of F1’s worst-kept secrets that the New Zealander will replace veteran Daniel Ricciardo at the squad, with a view to kickstarting a full-time campaign in 2025 for the Anglo-Italian team.

Reaching Formula 1 and laying claim to one of its 20 seats is hard enough as it is. But, as with many Antipodean drivers, it has taken a small miracle for Lawson to get noticed in Europe in the first place.

Growing up a stone’s throw away from the Pukekohe circuit on New Zealand’s North Island, Lawson got involved in the local go-karting scene at an early age and as he kept winning he moved up to domestic single-seater series.

But to reach the highest echelons of racing, moving to Europe early is all but required. So aged 16, Lawson packed his bags to compete in the German F4 championship with Dutch squad Van Amersfoort Racing, thanks to backing from a New Zealand sponsor.

But to get there in the first place, Lawson revealed his parents made a huge sacrifice. “My parents and my whole family really gave a lot, especially in the early years through go-karts,” Lawson told Red Bull’s Talking Bull podcast. “My parents sold their house so that I could keep racing. It’s massive. They gave absolutely everything for me to be able to race, even just go-karts because it’s so expensive.”

Like McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, who lived in boarding school in the UK as a teenager while trying to forge a racing career, Lawson’s perseverance was severely tested while 11,000 miles from home. But that early sacrifice often proves a formative experience for the Australian and Kiwi drivers that do make it across and provides them with the steel and grit to survive in F1’s often difficult environment.

“I didn’t finish high school or anything,” Lawson shared. “Honestly, I was just excited to be able to go and chase my dream. And there are always hard parts about it, but there was never a question of whether it was too difficult and I wanted to go home.”

But while he showed promise by finishing second in his first season in Europe, Lawson didn’t get picked up by an F1 junior academy right away, and he headed back home to New Zealand’s famed Toyota Winter Series without a…