Red Bull rookie Liam Lawson already facing the axe from the hardest job on the F1 grid

Liam Lawson is learning how hard it is to drive Red Bull car tailored to Verstappen, and could already face the chop from the hardest job on the grid after two races of the season.

IN December 2023, Alex Albon, one of a series of Red Bull drivers who have found the second seat to Max Verstappen too difficult to handle, attempted to describe the feeling of manoeuvring a car in the design that the four-times world champion prefers.

“If you bump up the sensitivity [on a computer game] completely to the max and you move that mouse and it’s just darting across the screen everywhere, that’s kind of how it feels. It becomes so sharp that it makes you a little bit tense,” Albon said.

Why did nobody listen? Fast forward just over a year, and the latest incumbent of the Red Bull second seat, Liam Lawson, looks like a shell of the excited young man who was ready to embark on the season only two weeks ago.

Liam Lawson is under intense scrutiny and pressure. Picture: GREG BAKER / AFP

The 23-year-old is yet to score a point for the team, and in a thoroughly miserable Chinese Grand Prix, qualified last for both the sprint and main race. Last season, when Sergio Perez’s form spiralled, it was easy to blame mentality, confidence and aptitude for the role. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; Christian Horner, the Red Bull team principal, warns that being Verstappen’s team-mate is the hardest job in Formula 1, and so it proves.

Yet Lawson has not suddenly turned into a poor driver overnight - after all, he got the seat after equalling the performance of Yuki Tsunoda with the Racing Bulls last season, with only a fraction of his experience. Horner felt Lawson’s ceiling of talent was much higher.

“Liam still has got potential,” Horner insisted. “We’re just not realising that at the moment. The problem for him is he’s had a couple of really tough weekends. He’s got all the media on his back . . . the pressure just naturally grows in this business.

“I feel very sorry for him. You can see that it is very tough on him. He’s a young guy. We’ve got a duty to look after him and we’re going to do the best that we can to support him.”

Lawson is performing much worse in a car which, at its peak, is faster. There lies the crux of the issue.

Looking ahead to Suzuka 💪

Liam Lawson seeks to improve his performances at the Japanese Grand Prix 🗣️ Watch his post-race interview in the 🧵 below...#F1pic.twitter.com/wVbp46mVK5

— Formula 1 (@F1) March 24, 2025

In the wind tunnel and the simulator this Red Bull car is quick, of that there is no doubt. But it is incredibly difficult to drive.

Verstappen is a generational talent, the best on the grid. The way he likes to set up his car, and therefore the direction which Red Bull have developed to favour, is one with a very strong front end, less stable on the entry to corners, and with a more unpredictable back end. The world champion would perhaps beat everyone on the grid in the same car, by a couple of tenths of a second.

It is not necessarily that the car has been engineered specifically for Verstappen, but simply that in the development direction, he is able to handle where the pure performance is better. It is understood that Perez also provided very little feedback, which has contributed to the issue - engineers took Verstappen’s suggestions. He has been more committed than ever in attempting to help understand the issue.

Lawson has a good feel for the car, and is able to provide accurate feedback, it just does not suit him and gives him little confidence. Even Verstappen has found the previous two Red Bull cars difficult to control and “peaky” with very little consistency.

Lawson has the tough job of being teammates with Max Verstappen. Picture: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

“At the beginning of 2022 we had quite a stable car, but with quite a bit of understeer that was in it, which obviously Max hates. We had an upgrade in Spain where we put a lot more front into the car, and Max made a big step forward. Checo [Perez] sort of nosedived from that point,” Horner said.

“You’ve got to produce the quickest car, and you’re driven by the information that you have and the data that you have, and that’s as a team. We don’t set out to make a car driver-centric, you just work on the info that you have and the feedback that you have to produce the fastest car that you can. That’s obviously served us very well with 122 victories.”

Verstappen believes Lawson would drive faster in the Racing Bulls team, which has a slower peak performance but is easier to handle. On the basis of last season, it feels hard to disagree. “Finding the limit in a car that has inherent understeer [the Racing Bull] is always going to be easier than finding the limit in a car that is a little more edgy,” Horner added.

Set-up changes can help (as Red Bull attempted to make under parc ferme conditions on Sunday, with Lawson starting from the pitlane) but attempting to remove the most difficult characteristics of the car also makes it inherently slower.

So, what next? The most alarming issue for Red Bull is that nobody seems to have a solution, least of all Horner. After the race in Shanghai he repeatedly refused to confirm that Lawson would still be at Red Bull for the Japanese Grand Prix in two weeks’ time.

One scenario understood to have been explored is swapping the New Zealander with Tsunoda, the Japanese driver who was overlooked for the seat over the winter. Tsunoda, 24, believes the Red Bull suits him (although that is easy to claim) and appears willing to risk his career on that statement.

That could leave Lawson in the Racing Bull, or perhaps replaced entirely, just two races into what was supposed to be a season in which his dreams are realised. Horner is concerned at the psychological toll this has taken on the New Zealander, but there is no evidence that another driver would perform any better.

As each second driver tries, and fails, to perform, spat out of the brutal Red Bull system, it has become increasingly evident that something more fundamental must change rather than the copy-and-paste approach of recent years.

More from The Times

Originally published as Red Bull rookie Liam Lawson already facing the axe from the hardest job on the F1 grid