Liam Lawson’s 2025 struggles expose a long-running issue at Red Bull

There is no denying that Liam Lawson’s start to the 2025 Formula 1 season has been nothing short of a disaster. No driver has endured such a miserable time at the start of their stint with Red Bull in the team’s two-decade-long history in F1.

Just two races in, Red Bull is panicking at Lawson’s lack of results and considering swapping him with Yuki Tsunoda as early as the next round in Japan.

You could forgive the top brass at Red Bull for being seriously concerned about Lawson’s early form in 2025, but demoting him after just two unconventional race weekends - a wet-weather-affected round and a sprint - would be drastic even for an organisation as harsh on young drivers as the energy drinks giant.

Make no mistake, a Red Bull driver shouldn’t be so slow that he qualifies dead last on the grid on a dry track. This indeed is a new low for the ‘cursed’ second seat at Red Bull.

But after a driver as experienced as Sergio Perez completely fell off a cliff last year, it was time for Red Bull to change its way and make a genuine effort to nurture a long-term replacement for him. Unfortunately, early evidence suggests that the ‘hit and trial’ method is still the name of the game at Milton Keynes.

It’s important to note that Red Bull tried all it could to help Perez get out of his 2024 slump and close the gap to Max Verstappen. The Mexican did get to keep his seat until the end of last season and it was only in December that the team led by Christian Horner decided to pay off a driver that it had signed an extension with just six months previously and bring in Lawson in his place.

Red Bull has also tried its best to widen the operating window of the RB21, even if that comes at the cost of outright performance.

However, Verstappen is the first to admit that the team’s 2025 challenger is miles off F1 pacesetter McLaren, while also being an incredibly difficult car to drive. It’s worth highlighting that Lawson’s disastrous results in Australia and China conveniently shifted the focus away from the inherent weaknesses of the RB21, with the Kiwi’s future now becoming the main talking point in Shanghai.

Red Bull have bigger problem to deal with

This is why Red Bull should understand that it has bigger problems to deal with at the moment, problems that have only been exposed further by Lawson’s inability to get to grips with its latest F1 car.

Red Bull is aware of what Lawson is capable of, having seen him become a frontrunner in Formula 3 and Formula 2 and challenge for the title in Super Formula and the DTM in cars bearing its famous blue-and-red livery.

Although his 11-race stint with AlphaTauri/RB was promising but not head-turning, even Red Bull understands that there are deeper issues behind why he has struggled so much since joining its flagship team this year.

What Verstappen has achieved in the RB21 (and last year's RB20) is nothing short of incredible, but he has been a part of the team for almost 10 years now - and the entire philosophy of the car closely matches his driving style.

Time and again, capable drivers from Red Bull’s junior scheme stepped into the other side of the garage and found the car impossible to tame. Perez, the first non-Red Bull protege in the team in over a decade, came closest to matching Verstappen, but as the team’s competitive struggles worsened last year, he too hit a low point in his career and found himself without a race seat in 2025.

With a major regulation overhaul coming in 2026, Red Bull could well put more effort into designing a car that is easy to drive and not skewed so far towards its star driver. This would be a tough challenge for Red Bull; even in the early 2010s, the blown diffuser pioneered by the team suited Sebastian Vettel more than his teammate Mark Webber.

Then, it’s a question about how Red Bull supports a driver going through a tough time in the second seat. This is where things get complicated as unlike some other top F1 teams on the grid Red Bull has two figureheads with very different personalities.

First is team principal Horner, who despite being infamous for engaging in a war of words with his Mercedes counterpart Toto Wolff, is known to be more supportive of young drivers - at least in public.

The second leading figure is Red Bull’s advisor Helmut Marko, who doesn’t usually hold back in the media and can be very harsh in his criticism of young drivers.

A contrast between the two could already be seen after Saturday in Shanghai. While Horner said “we’ll do what we can to help” Lawson, Marko ramped up speculation on the Kiwi’s future by commenting that "F1 is a performance sport and in the end that’s what counts".

Another tough race on Sunday has even prompted Horner to reassess the situation, only adding to the pressure Lawson is facing at the start of the season. Mind you, for all his experience in junior categories, Lawson is still 23 years old and hence not fully prepared for a pressure cooker environment like Red Bull.

Even if Tsunoda is parachuted into the car at Suzuka a fortnight later, that wouldn’t necessarily solve all the problems at Red Bull - certainly in the long term. While it’s fair to say that several of Lawson’s rivals have done a better job after changing teams over the winter, including Lewis Hamilton, Carlos Sainz and Esteban Ocon, Red Bull cannot expect Tsunoda to be on the pace straight away without any prior testing.

And if it does indeed choose to promote Tsunoda, it would make a mockery of its decision to forgo the experienced Japanese driver at the end of last year in favour of a full-season rookie in Lawson.

At this stage, Red Bull is better off picking one driver and building a support team around him, while making sure he is immune from criticism from external sources. Whether that is Tsunoda or Lawson is largely immaterial in the grand scheme of things, as both are capable drivers deserving of a seat at an A-grade team. But that A-grade team cannot function like a single-driver operation forever.