It’s been six races since Red Bull Racing sensationally dumped Liam Lawson for Yuki Tsunoda at Red Bull Racing, but so far the jury’s out on whether there are any winners from the messy driver swap.
The axe swung just two rounds into the season in a controversially ruthless move from Red Bull management. Lawson had had his rise through the Red Bull ranks accelerated to put him in a position to take the seat, but despite a disrupted pre-season, a clearly difficult car and the first two rounds taking place at circuits around which he’d never raced, patience evaporated in less than a fortnight.
The 23-year-old was dumped back to Racing Bulls on the eve of the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, the only circuit in the opening stanza of races at which Lawson had a depth of experience.
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The move was all the messier for Tsunoda being promoted into the senior team. While you’d struggle to find anyone in the paddock who didn’t think him worthy after four seasons of toil at the junior team, he’d also been consistently disregarded by Red Bull Racing management for the drive to the point that RBR principal Christian Horner suggested during the off-season that he’d be let go at the end of 2025.
It was a remarkable about-face that only heightened the long-formed impression that the Red Bull driver program was running out of ideas.
The audacious switch needs to pay off if anyone’s to come out of it without too much on egg on their face.
So far, however, the results have been inconclusive.
While both drivers have needed time to acclimatise to their new surroundings, neither has yet looked comfortable, and certainly neither looks like they’re getting anywhere close to their potential.
MISSION STATEMENT NOT YET MET
Red Bull Racing had a clear mission statement for its second driver this season: be better than Sergio Pérez.
It was not explicit, but it was clearly implied. The team had re-signed Pérez early last year on what it announced as a two-year contract spanning 2025 and 2026, but his form subsequently spiralled so badly that the team tore up the new deal before it had even begun, deciding it was better to pay him not to drive one of its cars.
It didn’t pay him off to replace him with a driver who would deliver worse results.
Alarmingly, neither Lawson nor Tsunoda has convincingly met that threshold.
The stats below compare the three drivers to have sat in the second Red Bull Racing car over the last 12 months.
They account for the last 18 races of 2024, when Pérez began to fade. This isn’t to diminish what had been a genuinely strong start to the season; rather it’s to analyse the form that convinced Red Bull Racing to cut him loose.
Lawson’s two starts and Tsunoda’s six starts to date are considered in contrast.
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The qualifying metrics are particularly telling. Pérez’s biggest struggle was over one lap, when the car was at its most unpredictable and difficult to tame.
While Lawson’s struggles were worse, Tsunoda so far has been an almost identical match.
Qualifying differential
Sergio Pérez: 7.8 places behind (11.4 average)
Liam Lawson: 15.5 places behind (15.5 average)
Yuki Tsunoda: 8.0 places behind (10.8 average)
The qualifying margins are also extremely similar.
Time differential*
Sergio Pérez: 0.694 seconds slower
Liam Lawson: 1.006 seconds slower
Yuki Tsunoda: 0.691 seconds slower
*all laps normalised to 90 seconds to make different circuits comparable.
You could argue that Tsunoda’s struggles are down to what’s had to be a rapid acclimatisation to his difficult car. Certainly that’s part of the story.
But if it were the entirety of it, you’d expect to see some improvement in the race-day performances, when the car is less sensitive and more compliant.
Instead we see the opposite.
Race differential
Sergio Pérez: 6.6 places behind (10.3 average)
Liam Lawson: 8.0 places behind (12.0 average)
Yuki Tsunoda: 8.4 places behind (10.0 average)*
*Tsunoda had been on average 7.3 places behind Verstappen before the Monaco Grand Prix, where difficulty overtaking and a failed strategy dropped him from 12th to 17th.
Tsunoda’s points tally is commensurately meagre.
Points scored
Sergio Pérez: 49-301 points (16.28 per cent of Verstappen’s score)
Liam Lawson: 0-36 points (0 per cent)
Yuki Tsunoda: 7-100 points (7.00 per cent)
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IS TSUNODA IN THE PÉREZ ZONE?
All Tsunoda’s vital statistics would appear to put him in the same performance zone as Pérez in the months before the axe swung.
But the situation isn’t quite so dire yet, and there are reasons for that.
The first is obvious: it hasn’t been long enough. Pérez was given years before his underperformance became sackable. Tsunoda is only six grands prix into his tenure and needs time to adjust to what is clearly a difficult car.
Lawson’s treatment might suggest otherwise, but as the data above shows, the Kiwi’s struggles were much worse, even if his two-race axing was undeniably harsh.
And if Tsunoda is already at Pérez’s level now, there’s reason to keep the faith that the flashes of speed he’s shown from round to round, albeit usually in practice, could yet become his regular level once he settles in the team.
The second element is directly related: that Red Bull Racing has come to accept, at least on some level, that its car is at the core of its problems.
When Tsunoda stepped up in Japan, he became Verstappen’s third teammate in four months. The fact each one of them has performed so poorly relative to the Dutchman is now more important than their identities.
Pérez said it repeatedly in his final months with the team, when the RB20 became so difficult to drive that even Verstappen himself was struggling to qualify and race with it. The Mexican was the canary in the coalmine for some deep-rooted, baked-in handling traits in this generation of Red Bull Racing car.
Verstappen’s prodigious talent has been able to paper over those considerable cracks for years, but now even the four-time champion can’t regularly save the team all its blushes.
Early in the year he was particularly vociferous about the team’s problems, and his backing of Lawson to succeed was interpreted as him urging the team not to scapegoat another driver over a technical problem.
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That of course isn’t to say that Red Bull Racing’s patience in infinite. While Monaco wasn’t a strong weekend for the team, Tsunoda’s performance in Imola last weekend was particularly hard to take at a circuit that played to the RB21’s strengths.
Verstappen contended for pole position and went on to win the race with what he proved was the fastest car on the day.
Tsunoda crashed out of Q1 without having set a time and was forced to start from pit lane. Safety car timing helped him up to 10th place for a point.
The Japanese star apologised profusely afterwards, acknowledging that there was no excuse for him to be pushing so hard on the first lap of qualifying an after having made some blind set-up changes to the car.
It contributed to a feeling that, after reasonably progress in his first few races with the team, Tsunoda’s trajectory has stalled.
And having been outqualified by Verstappen by 0.8 seconds, 0.7 seconds and 0.7 second at the previous three weekends, it was tempting to see this as a perpetuation of the same trend that nixed all his predecessors.
“You start off being a little bit behind but not by much,” Alex Albon told the High Performance podcast in 2023, recounting his time at Red Bull Racing. “Then as a season goes on, Max wants this front end in the car — he wants this car to be sharper, sharper.
“As it goes sharper and sharper, he goes quicker and quicker, and for you to catch up you have to start taking a little bit more risk.
“You might be a couple of tenths behind in one session. Just try a little bit more. ‘Okay, I’ve gone off, I’ve had a crash.’ Then you’ve got to restart. Then you’ve lost a little bit of confidence. It takes a little bit more time. That gap’s growing a little bit. Then the next time you try and go out and do another job, another spin.
“It just starts to snowball, and every time the car becomes sharper and sharper, you start to become more tense.
“It’s like any sport. If you start to not be in that flow state and you’re having to really think about it and every time you go into a corner you don’t know how it’s going to react — it’s purely the confidence in the car, the flow — it just doesn’t work. It never works.”
Six rounds isn’t enough to make a definitive judgement — notwithstanding it’s three times as long as Lawson got a the team — but it’s certainly enough to generate a first impression that will make Tsunoda’s mission harder to achieve.
On his side is the fact there’s no obvious replacement for him — yet.
But Isack Hadjar has started the countdown.
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HOW LONG UNTIL WE START TALKING ABOUT ISACK HADJAR?
Hadjar must be a strong contender for rookie of the season.
The Frenchman turned up on the grid this year as the least-hyped prospect of the year. Even Red Bull never gave the impression that it had any great faith in him as a long-term prospect.
His crash on the formation lap in Australia seemed to promise that his time in the sport would be limited.
Since then, however, he’s been deeply impressive.
His performance in Monaco at the weekend exemplified it, qualifying and finishing an excellent sixth on his first visit to the principality in F1 machinery, making him comfortably the highest-placed rookie of the round.
But it’s not just as an individual performer that Hadjar looks so strong.
The 20-year-old in the Racing Bulls car has started higher on the grid than the second Red Bull Racing car — piloted by either Lawson or Tsunoda — five times from the year’s eight grands prix so far. That includes three time from the last six rounds, since the driver swap.
Surprisingly — or unsurprisingly, given the above — he’s been the second-best Red Bull-backed driver based on average qualifying result over the last six races.
Average qualifying result, last six races
Max Verstappen: 2.8
Isack Hadjar: 9.8
Yuki Tsunoda: 11.0
Liam Lawson: 13.8
The same is true when you consider his average grand prix finishing position.
Average race result, last six races
Max Verstappen: 3.0
Isack Hadjar: 9.5
Yuki Tsunoda: 11.6
Liam Lawson: 13.4
His eight points in Monaco mean he’s now outscored Tsunoda in the six races since the Japanese driver moved up to the senior team, a remarkable achievement.
Points scored, last six races
Max Verstappen: 100 points
Isack Hadjar: 15 points
Yuki Tsunoda: 7 points
Liam Lawson: 4 points
It’s this kind of form that had the paddock wondering aloud why Tsunoda hadn’t been given the nod to replace Pérez at the end of last season.
How long until we start asking the same about Hadjar?
Although you’d have to wonder whether the Frenchman, having made such a strong first impression in Formula 1, would be served by such a move to the sport’s most difficult job.
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HOW’S LAWSON GOING AT RACING BULLS?
Hadjar’s gains have been Lawson’s losses this season. While the newcomer has impressed, the returnee has struggled to recapture the form that propelled him to RBR in the first place.
So far he’s been comprehensively beaten by his teammate.
Liam Lawson vs. Isack Hadjar, last six races
Qualifying differential: 4.0 places behind (13.8 average)
Time differential: 0.322 seconds slower
Race differential: 4.2 places behind (13.4 average)
Points scored: 4-15 (26.67 per cent)
Monaco, however, looked like the makings of a turning point. He was quick all weekend, and while Hadjar eventually overcame him in qualifying, he ticked off some vital achievements: first Q3 appearance and first points of the season.
They’ve come not a moment too soon, because Lawson is under more pressure than Tsunoda.
For one, he’s already been given a vote of no confidence. As much as Red Bull Racing dressed up his demotion as being in his best interests, it’s never re-promoted a driver it’s dropped, and every ex-RBR star has left the stable eventually.
The impetus comes from below. Red Bull has been big on its next junior, Arvid Lindblad, who has rapidly moved up through the junior ranks to debut in F2 this season after finishing fourth in last year’s Formula 3 championship.
The Briton’s currently sixth in the standings and the fourth-best rookie on the grid. He’s 19 points off the lead and has one victory — no-one has more than two wins so far — and is ahead of his more experienced teammate, Pepe Martí, in the standings.
Lindblad already has the points for a super licence but won’t be 18 until the mid-season break.
The mid-season break, as Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko said recently, is when Red Bull appraises the performance of its driver line-up and makes some tough calls.
That still leaves at least six rounds for Lawson to prove he’s up for it.
But if he falters, and if Lindblad’s trajectory continues, would you discount another change to Red Bull’s roster?