Ford Performance Gives F1 Driver Liam Lawson His First NASCAR Experience

Liam Lawson of Red Bull Racing (RBR) – Ford’s future F1 partner – headed down to the Ford Performance Technical Center in Concord, North Carolina, the heart of NASCAR country. Lawson was greeted by NASCAR driver Noah Gragson, who gave him his first taste of stock car racing in the state-of-the-art facility.

Lawson has extensive open-wheel experience, but not much by way of stock car racing. Gragson, who drives the No. 4 Ford Mustang Dark Horse in the NASCAR Cup Series, is obviously right at home in the facility, and they waste no time in heading to the racing simulator. Here, Ford drivers are able to practice in a virtual setting using the cutting edge setup. Lawson remarks that his favorite track in the U.S. thus far has been Circuit of the Americas (COTA), which is used by all manner of motorsport, including F1 and NASCAR.

Gragson helps set Lawson up in the simulator, where he’s driving a Mustang Cup Series car on the virtual asphalt of COTA. Lawson is a little squirrelly on the track at first, but considering this is his first time ever taking control of a stock car – virtual or not – Gragson is impressed. He remarks that Lawson performed better than he expected, and shells out $20 USD to the New Zealand native in prize money.

While Lawson won’t be driving a NASCAR stock car next year, he will be driving for The Blue Oval. Ford Performance partnered with RBR to produce powertrains for its F1 race cars beginning in 2026, bringing the Ford name back to open wheel racing after decades of absence. Lawson and Max Verstappen will be in control of those Ford-powered race cars, although there have been rumblings that Verstappen could cut ties with RBR before the Ford join-up. A driver of his caliber wants to be competitive, and if he thinks that the new partnership won’t measure up, it won’t be out of the realm of possibilities for him to cut and run.

For now, though, Verstappen is making the most of his time with Ford Performance, and even turned laps in a real-life Mustang Dark Horse earlier this year.