The bigger picture behind Daniel Ricciardo’s F1 axe and what it means for Sergio Perez

Red Bull’s decision to axe Daniel Ricciardo and promote Liam Lawson at their sister team RB represents a first step in solving their wider F1 driver line-up dilemma.

Following Thursday’s official confirmation that Lawson will take Ricciardo’s RB seat for the rest of the 2024 season, the 22-year-old New Zealander now has six races to stake a claim for a future Red Bull drive.

This audition will most likely determine whether Lawson continues at RB alongside Yuki Tsunoda in 2025, but it could yet have ramifications for the Red Bull senior team.

“I’ve basically got until the end of this season and then I’ll find out more as the season goes on. At this stage, it’s the six races,” Lawson said in an interview with New Zealand radio channel Newstalk ZB.

When asked what is required to secure a full-time seat for 2025, he replied: “I need to perform, basically.  I need to try to obviously show my worth in F1 and I would say do a similar job to what I did last year.

“That’s what’s given me the shot now. I just need to do enough to stay in the seat next year.”

Pressure back on Perez

The wider implications of Ricciardo being dropped is that Red Bull now have a chance to properly evaluate Lawson’s F1 credentials alongside Tsunoda.

It is not Lawson’s first rodeo, however. Last year, he stepped in for Ricciardo after the Australian broke his hand in a crash two races into his F1 comeback, having taken Nyck de Vries’ seat.

In his five outings, Lawson impressed Red Bull with several solid and mature drives. The standout highlight came in Singapore, where Lawson reached Q3 and finished ninth, scoring two points.

Red Bull had already committed to a Ricciardo-Tsunoda line-up for 2024 at this stage, so despite making a good impression, Lawson would have to spend another year on the sidelines.

With Lawson now getting a second chance to prove his worth with the main aim of helping RB stay ahead of Haas in the constructors’ championship, the pressure will be piled back onto Sergio Perez, who is not exactly covering himself in glory. 

Despite signing a new two-year contract in early June, speculation swirled about Perez’s future over the summer following a significant downturn in form. To quash the commotion, Red Bull felt the need to act by insisting that Perez would see out the remainder of the 2024 campaign.

While the plan is for Perez to keep his seat through 2025, there is zero guarantee he will stay for the full season, assuming he even starts it.

Overshadowed by Ricciardo’s F1 farewell, Perez struggled to a lowly 10th-place finish in Singapore while teammate Max Verstappen took second as Red Bull lost further ground to McLaren in the constructors’ standings.

Red Bull boss Christian Horner urged Perez to up his game and declared the team “need two drivers firing on all cylinders”. That was a clear warning shot to Perez, who will now be looking nervously over his shoulders at how Lawson gets on.

Perez’s position at Red Bull had been spared largely by a lack of obvious candidates to replace him, but Lawson’s arrival at RB will give both him, and the senior team, something to think about.

Red Bull’s 2026 driver dilemma

Ricciardo’s sad and slightly awkward F1 exit is part of a bigger picture play for Red Bull. The decision underlined he is not part of the team’s future plans and that his hopes of a fairytale return to Red Bull was nothing more than a pipe dream.

Perez’s poor form may be giving Red Bull a short-term headache, but they also face a dilemma when it comes to their 2026 driver line-up, which coincides with F1’s next major regulation overhaul.

On paper, they will have one seat to fill alongside Verstappen, who is tied down until the end of 2028. But the Dutchman’s future is also the subject of debate.

Verstappen continues to be linked with a possible switch to Mercedes, who have heavily - and publicly - courted him in recent months, while his stand-off against the FIA in Singapore in response to his punishment amid an F1 swearing saga has raised fresh questions whether he may call time on his career early.

Horner has admitted Red Bull face some tough calls over the coming 12 months or so as they continue to evaluate the promising talents in their driver pool.

“We’re having to look further down the road,” Horner told Sky Sports F1 in Singapore. “We’ve got some great talent, we’ve got Liam Lawson. We’re not quite sure, looking at the likes of [Franco] Colapinto and [Ollie] Bearman and [Kimi] Antonelli, is he at that level? Only time will tell.

“We’ve got Isack Hadjar in Formula 2, that’s been until recently leading that championship. We’ve got a very exciting young talent that I’m particularly excited about in F3 - Arvid Lindblad. So we’ve got depth in our junior programme. We want to take time to consider what all of our options look like for the future.”

Were Lawson to impress Red Bull enough to convince them to give him the nod over Perez for 2025, or at any point during next season, Isack Hadjar (Formula 2), Ayumu Iwasa (Super Formula) and possibly Arvid Lindblad (Formula 3) would be towards the front of the queue of candidates to step up to RB.

Horner also stressed that Red Bull are not “afraid” to look outside of their driver pool and intriguingly namechecked George Russell as a potential option for 2026, comments which irked Mercedes counterpart Toto Wolff.

“George Russell is out of contract at the end of next year. It would be foolish not to take that into consideration,” Horner said. "There are other talented drivers that could well be out of contract as well.”

Horner appeared to be hinting that the two-time grand prix winner could be Red Bull’s Plan B in a worse-case scenario that saw Verstappen leave for Mercedes, who next year are promoting their highly-rated teenage prodigy Andrea Kimi Antonelli as Ferrari-bound Lewis Hamilton’s replacement. It remains to be seen if Red Bull would seriously pursue Russell if Verstappen stayed put.

Either way, with it seeming unlikely that Perez will be handed another deal beyond his current contract, Red Bull will surely be looking for at least one new driver.