How long do you anticipate Red Bull will take to get Liam Lawson up to speed before switching? – Jon
Their patience appears to have run out, in some ways. This week, Red Bull will be discussing Lawson’s future, and it’s possible that he won’t compete in the upcoming Japanese Grand Prix.
If they go through with it, it will be regarded as a quite remarkable decision, which raises serious questions about the management at Red Bull Racing.
Let’s go back and explain why.
Sergio Perez was signed to a two-year contract extension with the Red Bull team in May of last year, ending his 2026 contract there.
This was despite the fact that the Mexican was struggling as Max Verstappen’s team-mate, and that the 2024 season looked to be going the same way as the year before – a bright start from Perez, and then an alarming slump in form.
Carlos Sainz, who had left Ferrari to sign Lewis Hamilton, might have been a free agent. However, he remembered the tensions between the Sainz and Verstappen camps at Toro Rosso in 2015 and made up his mind to return.
Re-signing Perez, Horner’s theory went, would give him the confidence to recover his form.
The strategy was utterly unsuccessful. Despite Verstappen winning a fourth world title by 63 points, Perez’s performances fell off a cliff, and the team fell to third place in the constructors’ championship.
Verstappen only won twice in the final 14 races of the year because the car lost competitiveness and became difficult to drive. So do Perez’s difficulties.
However, Helmut Marko, Horner, and Helmut Marko, the team’s motorsport adviser, decided Perez had had his day and needed to change.
They paid him off – to the tune of many millions of dollars – and signed Lawson.
Because they thought he had a mental toughness lacking the Japanese, they chose the New Zealander over Yuki Tsunoda, their much more experienced team-mate at the junior Racing Bulls team.
The season has started badly for Lawson. He qualified 18th at the season-opener in Melbourne, where he crashed out of the race, and last in both the sprint and grand prix in China, failing to make much progress in either event.
Verstappen, however, struggles at least partially, too. He does not conceal his belief that the car is the top four teams, as he did in China, where he made a strong suggestion that it might not be as fast as the Racing Bull.
The Red Bull is nervous on corner entry, has mid-corner understeer and is snappy on exits. And it doesn’t seem to the team to be able to fix it.
Verstappen enjoys a sharp front end, but he doesn’t want the car to act in this way. But he can cope, and get a lap time out of it. Lawson is unable to, at least not at this point.
Lawson spoke in Chinese as though he already recognized the writing on the wall.
“It’s just (got) a very small window”, he said. You know, driving is difficult, but it’s “hard” to get it in that window. With the passage of time, I’d like to say that I simply don’t have the time to do that. It’s something I need to get on top of”.
The management will need to do some serious explaining if Red Bull decides to drop him after two races.
They will be questioned if signing him in December was the wise choice. Why is that the case now? If Tsunoda is the driver replacing him, the question becomes even starker.
That’s probably too early if they instead choose Frenchman Isack Hadjar, who impressed as Tsunoda’s rookie team-mate in the first two grands prix.
Why blame the driver, if the car appears to be the first-order culprit, as it should be?
