Red Bull’s Lawson pick makes its Ricciardo experiment a waste of time

Let’s recap the saga of Red Bull’s second seat alongside Max Verstappen, shall we? It’s a saga that, by all accounts, is gratuitously long and ends in a resolution that would be entirely predictable for a team with a ‘normal’ approach to the driver market.

Carlos Sainz became unexpectedly available for 2025 when his Ferrari seat went to Lewis Hamilton. The Verstappens did not want Sainz in the Red Bull team, lest the unpleasantness from the time they were Toro Rosso team-mates resurface. In the early season, Perez was doing his job as number two, and so Christian Horner decided to extend his contract early to stave off any potential losses in form as he’d experienced in 2023.

That didn’t work, and instead Perez’s regression was even more cataclysmic. Red Bull had brought Daniel Ricciardo back to F1 to serve as a potential plug-in-and-play replacement if Perez dropped off again, but Ricciardo’s own form was poor and was beaten comprehensively by Yuki Tsunoda in their time as team-mates. 

Perez’s form continued to drop, to the point where Red Bull thought about replacements ahead of the summer break. Liam Lawson was invited to test the Red Bull, with rumours that he hadn’t quite found the pace that was being looked for. As such, Perez was retained for the rest of 2024, but continued to be awful everywhere except Baku. Ricciardo was dropped after Singapore, and Lawson took the seat. Tsunoda beat the Kiwi semi-rookie in points scored and in qualifying, but Horner doesn’t really like him. As such, the choice was this: retain Perez and the god-knows-how-many millions he brings in Mexican sponsorship, effectively rendering him a pay-driver, or show Perez the exit door and bring Lawson in. The latter option was selected.

Whether or not you agree with the choice of Lawson to join Red Bull, there are very clear qualities that he offers to his new employers: consistency, toughness on track, and strong race pace. If the car’s good, he’ll win races if the conditions are right, but he’s there to ultimately back up Verstappen’s title defence in 2025. The measure of success will simply be shrinking the gap that Verstappen and Perez had towards the end of their time together.

But Red Bull’s decision to hire Lawson raises a significant question: if he’s now good enough to move up to the senior team, why was he not considered good enough for a seat at RB a year ago?

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