Last year Red Bull announced that Liam Lawson was to replace Sergio Perez after Checo’s contract was finalized due to the performance clauses. Back in 2024, while Max Verstappen won the Drivers’ Championship, the gap between Max and Checho meant that Red Bull came in third for the Constructors’ Championship behind McLaren in first, and Ferrari in second.
There were already doubts about the potential performance that Liam Lawson could show against Max, but especially against the RB21. A car that Max himself has said that is becoming ever harder to drive and be fast in. That ever since Adrian Newey left the team, has become harder on the nose, which translates to a back-end that is harder to control. After just two races Liam has not been able to match Max’s speed. With Max finishing second on the first Grand Prix in Australia, and Lawson retiring in lap 46. And somehow even worse in Shanghai being a Sprint weekend. With Max finishing P4 and Liam P12 in the Race, and P3 and P14 in the Sprint race respectively. But the highlight was the Kiwi qualifying last for both events.
On Thursday 27th it was announced, Yuki Tsunoda will jump into the Red Bull for the Japan GP. And with that announcement questions start to arise. Was that enough time for Liam? Will Yuki be able to perform better? Is this the end of Yuki’s career? For those questions to be answered we will need to wait until the Japan GP weekend on April 4th to 6th. But when we look at the fact that Liam has become the shortest-ever full-time career in Red Bull, the first question we should ask ourselves is not whether the drivers are good enough for Formula 1.
Is Red Bull creating an undrivable monster?
We have seen this story play out. “Super-star” comes into the team and starts winning right away. The team focuses on making sure that said “super-star” can feel comfortable and be as fast as humanly possible, beating all possible records in their wake. After years of winning everything under the Sun and ruining multiple teammates’ careers, the team starts to advance in a direction where not even “super-star” is able to make the thing go as fast as they used to, the competition is closing in fast, and despite all efforts and feedback saying that it’s somehow worse, they are even slower.
This is the same story Marc Marquez went through at the Repsol Honda HRC MotoGP team. Except that in this case, Marc suffered a few too many crashes, injured himself too badly, and took off one the 2020 season to go through surgery and recover himself. Marc abandoned the Repsol project that year. And while he rode in the Repsol colors until 2023, he barely made an impression. Jumped into the Gressini Ducati in 2024, and started to find speed again. Now in 2025 Marc is leaps and bounds ahead of the field, while Honda is finally, after five long years, starting to show up as a potential contender for somewhat good results.
Max may be finding himself in a very similar situation. Being in Red Bull from 2016, having a team that slowly is developing the car around Max, and winning championships since 2021 almost undefeated. Let us remember that in 2023 Max won 11 consecutive times (a record that McLaren held since 1998) and won the Drivers’ Championship with six Grand Prix to spare. And from 2024 onwards, Verstappen has been saying that the car is ever harder to drive, it is on a narrower knife-edge and it takes more effort to make the car go around as fast as Max wants it to.
So, just like when Marc abandoned the Repsol Honda project. Should Max decide to leave Red Bull? Are the careers from Daniel Ricciardo, Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Sergio Perez, and Liam Lawson, enough for Christian Horner and Helmut Marko to stop looking at their drivers, and finally confront the reality that, the RB21 is not enough to make even Max Verstappen fast around the track? A car that has been built for one single driver, is inevitably a ticking-time-bomb.
We are sure that Yuki will give his best to make an impression in Red Bull, a seat that he has been aiming for ever since Pierre Gasly was demoted for Alex Albon ahead of the 2019 Belgian Grand Prix. However, if Lawson somehow finds excellent pace in the Racing Bulls, being able to score points and battle it out in the upper-mid-field, while Yuki struggles even to pass into Q2 on Saturday. All questions, spotlights, and cameras should then turn, not to Yuki, Max, or even Checo. But to Christian Horner and Helmut Marko and what are they going to do to create a car that not only can take Max around a track fast, but that is possible for all Red Bull Academy drivers to eventually be fast in.