Formula 1 (F1) fans will need no introduction to Liam Lawson, but if you aren't, then Lawson secured a full-time F1 seat with Oracle Red Bull in 2025. Lawson was demoted after the second round of the season, but is contracted to remain at Visa Cash App Racing Bulls until at least the end of 2026. With everything on the line for this year, you'd expect Lawson to give this off-season everything, and he is, but on a motocross track.
Lawson was spotted riding a Red Bull-stickered GasGas MC 250F around a motocross track recently. The bike looks fantastic, like a full-factory machine, ala Jorge Prado during the 2023 and 2024 MXGP seasons. Although we don't know where Lawson is riding—presumably a track in New Zealand—from the one picture of him airborne, he looks almost as comfortable on two wheels as he does on four.
It should come as no surprise that Lawson looks so confident on a bike, as it's far from the first time we've seen an F1 driver throw a leg over.
The most famous example is when Lewis Hamilton and Valentino Rossi swapped machinery and took to the track back in 2019, in what was one of the best pieces of content Monster Energy has ever produced—who did not want to watch that?
More recently, Hamilton took to Instagram to give fans a glimpse of what his life during the offseason looks like, and we were treated to more off-road machinery. Hamilton's KTM XC-F 250 isn't as bling as Lawson's, but it looks fresh off the production line. Now, if he could share some pictures, or better yet, a video of him riding, we'd be all for it.
Another former F1 driver with a passion for motorcycles is Daniel Ricciardo, who spent some time riding with then-factory Kawasaki AMA Supercross rider Adam Cianciarulo, and since then has been seen training with Sete Gibernau on miniGP bikes, and more recently with Axell Hodges riding a Honda CRF110F around the Slayground.
Lando Norris is the F1 star we're all holding our breath for, however. After Norris took the 2025 F1 championship, he was offered a ride on a Red Bull KTM Tech3 MotoGP bike by none other than former Haas F1 chief Guenther Steiner. It's not a crazy thing to dream about either, as, according to Norris, "You know what, I would love to do motorbike stuff. That's actually where I started," Norris said at the Esports World Cup in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in August. "So I did horse riding - I hated that. Quad biking - my dad sold it, he said it got stolen, he just sold it because it was too dangerous for me. Then I went to motocross."
What F1 and MotoGP stars would you like to see swap places, ala Hamilton and Rossi?
