F1 drivers Max Verstappen and Liam Lawson recently joined hands at the Red Bull racing team. They will be teammates for the 2025 F1 season, and for the first time in 4 years, Max will have a new teammate much younger than him. But how many of you know? Max and Liam are connected with an unfamous shoe incident before Lawson’s debut in Formula 1. It was the 2021 Formula 1 season when Max won his first world title for the Red Bull team and Lawson was their development driver.
The 2021 Azerbaijan Grand Prix was infamous for causing tyre punctures and causing big crashes for drivers like Lance Stroll and Max Verstappen. Red Bull driver Max was in a title fight with Lewis Hamilton and was leading the race. It is also one of those races that extended the title fight to the final race. If Max had won that race, he would have won his title way before the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
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Shoe connection story
After the crash, the Mercedes driver took the race lead. Unfortunately, Lewis Hamilton also lost his race lead during the restart, where he pressed the wrong button mistakenly, causing him to underbake. Sergio Perez took the lead and won the race and Hamilton also went without any points. So what is the ‘Shoe connection story’ between Max and Lawson? Liam Lawson and Max Verstappen both had the same shoe size. During the race, Max Verstappen did not receive his shoes for the race. He asked his teammate Sergio Perez for his race boots. But Checo's size was much smaller compared with Max's.
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Liam Lawson's shoes are similar in size to Max's and are the only option available to Verstappen, and he took those shoes that weekend. Lawson describes the incident as “I was at the hotel for a little bit and came back to the track between one of the sessions, and my team boss Oli sent me a photo. Oli said, ‘I just gave these to Red Bull, and Max needs to wear them because you’re the only one person with the same size feet’.” Lawson added, “They weren't even Red Bull boots. I am kind of sad I didn't give him nice boots. They were just plain Puma boots, and he wore those for the rest of the weekend. My boots get to F1 and I don't,” he laughed.
The infamous incident was Max Verstappen's Red Bull car tyres blasted midway when he was leading the race, making him crash on the main straights with just five laps to go in the race. Verstappen, out of frustration, kicked the Red Bull car with Liam Lawson’s boots and walked away. Many say ‘Helping Max by giving him his boots at a critical time was the biggest reason Lawson was selected as a Red Bull driver’: Haha! Just kidding.
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