F1 Q&A: Lawson Future a Red Bull, Ferrari, Hamilton, Leclerc and Racing Bulls

How long do you think Red Bull will give Liam Lawson to accelerate before contemplating a switch? – Jon

Rather, it seems that their patience is already exhausted. Red Bull will discuss Lawson’s future this week and there is a strong possibility that will be abandoned for the next race in Japan.

If they face it, it will be considered a fairly remarkable decision, which raises serious questions about the direction of Red Bull Racing.

To understand why, we rewind.

In May last year, the back of the Red Bull team Christian Horner decided to sign Sergio Perez again with a two -year contract that brought him until the end of 2026.

Nonetheless, the fact that the Mexican was fighting as Max Verstappen’s teammate and that the 2024 season seemed to go in the same way of the previous year – a bright start from Perez and then an alarming collapse in shape.

Horner could have brought Carlos Sainz, who was a free agent following Ferrari’s decision to sign Lewis Hamilton. But he remembered the tension between the fields of Sainz and Verstappen when they were teammates in Toro Rosso in 2015 and decided that he did not want to go back.

Re-tell Perez, Horner’s theory has gone, would have given him the security of recovering his form.

The strategy has not succeeded in a spectacular way. Perez’s performances fell from a cliff and the team collapsed in third place in the manufacturers’ championship despite Verstappen won a fourth world title of 63 points.

Verstappen has won only twice in the last 14 races of the year because the car has lost competitiveness and has become difficult to drive. Then the struggles of Perez.

But the councilor of Horner and Red Bull Motorsport Helmut Marko decided that Perez had his day and They needed to make a change.

They paid – for many million dollars – and Signed Lawson.

They chose the New Zealand for his teammate much more experienced in the Junior Racing Bulls team, Yuki Tsunoda, because they believed they had a mental hardness that the Japanese were missing.

Lawson had a terrible beginning of the season. He qualified 18th at the opening of the season in Melbourne, where he crashed out of the race, and last both in the sprint and in the Grand Prix in China, failing to make many progress in both events.

But Verstappen is also struggling, at least relatively. He is not hiding his belief that the car is the slowest of the first four teams – in fact he implicated strongly enough in China who believed that he could not be as fast as the racing bull.

The Red Bull is nervous at the corner entrance, has a half -time in half and is quickly on the exits. And the team does not seem to know how to solve it.

Verstappen likes a front -end, but does not want the car to behave in this way, but it can do it and take a ride. Lawson cannot, at least not yet.

Lawson was talking to China as if he had already known that the writing was on the wall.

“It’s only (obtained) a very small window,” he said. “It’s difficult, you know – it’s difficult to drive, take it to that window. I would like to say that with the time it will arrive – I don’t have time to do it. It’s something I need to get to the top.”

If Red Bull drops him after two races, the direction will have some serious explanation to do.

If you sign it was the right decision in December, because it is the wrong decision now, they will be asked. If Tsunoda is the driver who replaces him, the question becomes even more clear.

And if instead they choose the French Isack Hadjar, who impressed as a teammate from Rookie di Tsunoda in the first two great prixs, well, it is certainly too early.

In the same way, if the first order problem is the car – how does it seem to be – why blame the driver?

For many in F1 there is an aphorism that summarizes the Red Bull approach to their second place: “Madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expects different results”.