"I'm just going to pretend I never even went there," says Liam Lawson of his controversial two-race career with Red Bull.

By any standards, Red Bull, which, along with its sister team, has always had a reputation for its lack of patience with drivers, especially with Helmut Marko calling the shots, outdid itself when it demoted the kiwi after just two outings.

The lack of time given the youngster was wholly at odds with the continued chances given to the driver who preceded him, Sergio Perez.

Now, happily ensconced at said sister team, Lawson has spoken out about a time in his life he would prefer to forget.

"The whole thing was played out to be me being mentally struggling and all this stuff, and like they were doing it to protect me," he tells the High Performance Podcast. "Honestly, that could not be further from what it was actually like," he adds.

Having crashed out in the season opener in Melbourne, he finished a distant twelfth in China, his cause not helped by a radical set-up the team imposed on him.

"We had spoken about basically trying something quite wild on the car to get some comfort for me, but also because at the time collectively we weren't happy at all with the car," he says. "Max wasn't happy," he adds. "Everyone was like, 'This is not working, and we need to try something quite radical here'.

"So we all had a meeting on Saturday night, and it was decided, I was on board with it because the idea was 'let's try something quite crazy, but it might help get a direction for Liam and for the team going forward to make this car a bit easier to drive'.

"We decided, 'OK, let's start from the pitlane and basically radically change a car'. We made a massive change you would never do on a race weekend, like a normal change times ten. Trying to get the same balance out of the car, just in a very different way. An easier car to drive, a more stable car to drive.

"But it's a shot in the dark," he admits, "and even if it works, the chance of it working over a race was very low.

"I knew all of these things, but it was proposed to me as, 'This is going to help you for the future, and this is going to give us a bit more direction. We're going to try this. You're starting last in the race, it's done anyway. Let's just try something, and this will help you'."

Days later he was demoted and replaced by Yuki Tsunoda, who was to fare little better.

Asked how the demotion affected him, he replies: "I tried to as much as possible, I even pretended it never even happened. I spent two races there, and the way it all went down was just so crazy that I honestly was like, I'm just going to pretend I never even went there."

However, the kiwi was keen to praise teammate Max Verstappen for his support.

"He is in such a high-level position, such an accomplished position that he's had so much success, it'd be very easy for him to not be like that," admits Lawson. "When I went to Red Bull, through all of it, he was very supportive. I won't go too much into detail about it, but he was very supportive."

Asked how best to describe those two outings with the Austrian team, he says: "Let me say, you can always do a better job. So, I look at those two races, if I want to reflect on them, and I did at the time, I could have done a better job in some ways.

"But I think just the way we did, really no testing. I did half a day before the season, and even then, our Bahrain testing was very compromised as well. We had some issues, and I just went into the first weekend very unprepared. I just kept telling myself that I'll just deal with it, it'll be fine."