Living in the shadow of Verstappen: How Red Bull wears one Formula 1 driver after the other

Life in the shadow of Verstappen
How Red Bull wears one Formula 1 driver after the other

By Christian Schenzel
03/27/2025, 8:23 p.m.

After just two races, the Formula 1 adventure from Liam Lawson at Red Bull Racing has ended. The weak results are doomed to New Zealand. The team and Max Verstappen are also responsible for his failure.

Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen receives a new teammate at Red Bull Racing after just two season races. Yuki Tsunoda is promoted to the top racing team before his home race in Japan (April 6th), New Zealander Liam Lawson has to clear his cockpit and is now driving again for the sister team Racing Bulls. Red Bull confirmed the exchange on Thursday, and this measure had been expected since the last race in China. “It was hard to see how Liam had to struggle with the RB21 in the first races,” said team boss Christian Horner: “It is a purely sporty decision.”

The reason for Lawson’s lightning-out is therefore obvious: the 23-year-old simply delivered too bad results. In the three qualifying sessions he ended up in places 18, 20 and 20. In his three training sessions, too, it was only enough for him to P16, P17 and P18. In the three races (two Grands Prix, one sprint), P15, P14 and P12 were booked. This is simple and moving “intolerable”, As RTL expert Christian Danner aptly expressed it.

What makes Vappen’s desired vote so complicated

Now the bare numbers are only part of the truth. It is also true: Verstappen and the team make life difficult for the second driver. The Dutch requires a very specific behavior from his car. He wants to steer quickly, hard and directly. For this he needs an extremely stable front. The rear becomes “soft” with this and tends to oversteer with the smallest inaccuracy. If it does, everything is gone: the pace, the tires and thus the race.

Verstappen is able to keep the Red Bull in this tiny tolerance area and at the same time drive quickly, Lawson and its predecessor. Alex Albon, who recently described the problem in the “High Performance” podcast, was one of them. “I like a direct front, Max too. But his level of spicy and direct is a completely different level. It is as if you put the sensitivity of your mouse on the computer on the maximum. Then the pointer dances over the screen. And so it feels about that (The Red Bull, note d. Red.) on. It becomes so sharp that it tenses, “said Albon, who described Verstappen’s driving style as” pretty unique “and said:” It is not so easy to adjust to it. “

Horner adds: Red Bull builds Formula 1 car for Verstappen

Of course, this is not a secret. Nor did Red Bulls design the car to be fully designed after Derbappen’s ideas. Team boss Christian Horner publicly admitted this a few days ago in the “Sky Sports” interview. When asked whether another driver could drive the car at all than Verstappen at all, Horner said: “Max is very special when it comes to what he wants from the car. (…) This enables him to drive on knife cutting edge. And of course you always follow the direction of your faster driver. This determines the direction of development.”

This procedure of the team is of course not critical. Verstappen’s victories and the four World Cup titles impressively prove that Red Bull rely on the right horse. The second drivers pay the price for this. Now Lawson, in the past, among others, Albon and also Pierre Gasly.

Formula 1 career from Lawson not over yet

The good news for the New Zealander: his red Bull-Aus is far from the same with a Formula 1-off. Albon and Gasly have already shown that. Both have established themselves in the premier class and have long been the real good F1 driver. Incidentally, this also applies to Yuki Tsunoda, who has always had a lot of speed, but can finally call up this in 2025. Whether he can do this in the difficult to drive RB21 is on another sheet.

At Red Bull, not only the uncomfortable RB21 is waiting for the Japanese, but also a completely different printing situation than in the B team. He has been pounding on the top for years, and it has been rejected for years. Now he has to prove that he is better than many of his predecessors. His window is small. Like that of the RB21. “One to three tenths” should ideally only be his distance from Verstappen, RTL-insider Felix Görner explained. If there will be more, Red Bull will very soon be new discussions.