Are there enough reasons to justify Lawson’s Red Bull deal?

It’s somewhat explainable how Red Bull ended up here. You don’t necessarily have to agree that Christian Horner and Helmut Marko have made all the right decisions regarding their team’s driver line-up over the past year and a half, but you can still find some logic in how they came to the point where they had to replace Sergio Perez with Liam Lawson.

It’s fairly easy to say now that it was a mistake to bring back Daniel Ricciardo and give him an audition with the junior team, keeping Lawson on the bench. And it turned out to be just that – an obvious mistake – but imagine what a story it could have been had it all worked out! It was perhaps even a slightly sentimental move on Horner’s part, as it’s no secret how much of a fan he is of the Australian. But who wouldn’t have loved the story? One of the most popular characters in the paddock returns to the family after a few troubled years with Renault and McLaren. You can see how it might have seemed almost irresistible – or at least worth a try.

It’s now clear that extending Perez’s contract was a disaster. But even that decision was, in a way, perfectly understandable. At the start of this season, Perez was simply the ideal second driver that Red Bull needed, full stop. A good team player, collecting podiums, adding points to the team’s constructors’ championship tally – and not really bothering Max Verstappen. In early 2024, Perez was simply perfect – not least because he seemed to have accepted by then that he would never be able to challenge his team-mate. His huge fan base in Mexico, buying hundreds of thousands of Red Bull branded caps, and a portfolio of sponsors were a massive added bonus.

If Checo had remained as consistent as he was at the start of the season, no one would have thought that Red Bull needed to sign someone like Carlos Sainz. After all, if only half of the stories about how bad things went between the Sainz and Verstappen camps at Toro Rosso in 2015 and early 2016 are true, the risk of bringing the Spaniard back into the family would appear unjustified.

Yes, when Perez’s contract was renewed, he was already showing signs of decline, but it could have been dismissed as just “a blip”. After all, at that point, his stellar start to the season had only been marred by a disappointing weekend in Imola and a couple of crashes in Monaco. But who hasn’t had a bad weekend? And is there even a single driver on the grid who has never crashed in Monaco?

That…