Lawson gets another Red Bull outing with Hadjar sidelined again

Red Bull will keep Liam Lawson in the car for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, with Isack Hadjar remaining on the sidelines, according to The Race. That means another deputising outing for Lawson and another weekend without Hadjar in the lineup.

For Red Bull, the immediate value of sticking with Lawson is continuity. Race weekends are compressed, and every change forces engineers, strategists and the driver himself to work through a slightly different preparation process. Keeping Lawson in place avoids another reset and gives the team a familiar reference as it heads into Monza. Just as importantly, the move suggests Red Bull is treating the situation as a managed fallback rather than a last-minute scramble. Based on The Race’s report, Lawson is not simply filling a gap for one race and then stepping away again; he is being retained while Hadjar remains sidelined.

That matters because driver substitutions do more than cover an absence. They reveal how a team sees its own depth chart. Red Bull has long been associated with a hard-edged approach to junior talent and seat security, and a repeat deputy role for Lawson offers another glimpse into that structure. Even without any additional detail about the reason for Hadjar’s absence, the fact that he is still out and Lawson is still in underlines that Red Bull is leaning on an existing option instead of reshuffling its wider pool. In practical terms, that keeps its fallback plan active and its next steps flexible. It also shows how quickly a team can be forced to rely on drivers already inside the system when race-weekend needs change.

The wider significance is less about Monza alone and more about what repeated changes, or the lack of them, say about longer-term planning. Substitute drivers are often judged not just on the race they cover, but on whether they fit a team’s broader needs under pressure. Lawson remaining in the car gives Red Bull another chance to observe him in a top-level environment, while Hadjar’s continued absence means more lost running for a driver who, for now, remains on the sidelines. The source does not say when Hadjar will return, so any timing beyond Monza remains unconfirmed.