That Red Bull is getting ready to drop Liam Lawson in a swap deal with Yuki Tsunoda just two races into the 2025 Formula 1 season is extraordinary - even for a team that loves to make a change.
It points to something having gone catastrophically wrong between the high hopes that Red Bull had of Lawson's potential just a few months ago when it paid Sergio Perez off to go for him.
And while on paper the results seem to justify a move - Lawson's dire qualifying performances (18th, 20th and 20th) are the worst run a Red Bull driver has ever had - the fact that they are so bad is quite difficult to understand.
This is all a world away from the lofty expectations Red Bull had last winter that it could shake off its second-car problems it had endured with Perez and which proved so costly for its 2024 constructors' championship hopes.
Signed on his potential
Back then, Red Bull was adamant that it felt Lawson was a much better prospect than Tsunoda - not because he was so much faster than the Japanese driver, but because of the potential he had to do even better.
Speaking to media including The Race before Christmas, Horner said: "In qualifying, the margins to Yuki were very tight, and on race pace he's come out on average above Yuki. So there's very, very little to choose between them.
"But when you look and you consider that Liam is still only 11 races in, and he's already at that level, the potential for growth is still significant.
"And I think coupled with that, what has really stood out with him has been his attitude and his ability to deal with pressure."
Horner cited the way Lawson plotted his way through last year’s chaotic Brazilian Grand Prix, and had impressed everyone by winning races and just missing out on the DTM title in 2021 and Super Formula two years later.
Horner added: "He races hard, and he's got broad shoulders, and I think you need that to be in that seat."
An incompatible match
Over a 10-day period between first practice in Australia this year and race day in China, Red Bull's view has changed completely - with the squad deciding that there is little point persevering with Lawson.
If it has looked at its data and concluded that there is no point continuing with Lawson then it must feel that he and the RB21 are incompatible.
The tricky characteristics of the car, which even Verstappen has described as being confusing and difficult to cope with at times, has certainly contributed a lot to Lawson being all at sea.
The nature of the RB21 certainly points to being more tailored to the unique style that Verstappen favours - of it being an awful lot on the nose.
It requires a driving style of being able to cope with a nervous rear end, something Verstappen is well known to be on top of.
For Lawson, however, it has proved to be a step too far when combined with the fact that he could just not find consistency with its operating window.
It's not that he is slow everywhere. It is just that in certain corners or sequences he cannot find what he needs.
As he explained last weekend about where he was lacking: "It's normally just a couple of places to be honest. A lot of quali, a lot of the lap is actually very similar. It's just a couple of places normally.
"Overall, it's just how the car is to drive. It's a very small window. I think obviously Max is able to get in and have the car on the limit, know where the limit is everywhere, and be comfortable with it. And it's just something I'm figuring out."
In Q1 in China, for example, Lawson lost a chunk of time in the first corner complex, but then actually chipped away at Verstappen's Q1 effort to be closer to him through the middle sector of the lap. But he blew away a chunk of time coming out on to the back straight, which cost him all the way down the Turn 14 hairpin.
Speaking on Saturday in China about what he was struggling with overall, Lawson said: "It's just a small window and yeah, it's just - it's hard. It's hard to drive, it's hard to get it in that window.
"And I'd love to say that with time obviously that will come. I just don't really have the time to do that. So it's just something that I need to get on top of."
He added: "It's just car characteristics, it's the way the car drives. But...obviously if Max is able to drive it, then I should be able to get on top of it as well."
A car for Verstappen
That the RB21 appears to have gone even more towards what Verstappen needs, at the expense of a team-mate who perhaps does not like things that way, is not something that Red Bull has done consciously.
However, it is almost certainly a consequence of the fact that over the four years that Perez was sat alongside Verstappen at Red Bull, his technical feedback was nowhere near as comprehensive and insightful as the four-time world champion's.
So, when it came to debriefs, or engineering meetings, or car planning chats, it was obvious that Red Bull's technical team would listen to the side of the garage that was offering the greatest detail, the best feedback and was also producing the best results.
Horner himself has admitted that development directions have had an impact on the performance swings between drivers, but that is not such an unusual thing to understand.
"If I think back to the beginning of '22, we had quite a stable car with quite a bit of understeer in it, which obviously Max hates," he said.
"We had an upgrade in Spain where we put a lot more front into the car and Max made a big step forward, and Checo sort of nosedived from that point.
"So you've got to produce the quickest car and you're driven by the information that you have and the data that you have.
"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 you have to produce the fastest car that you can. And that's obviously served us very well, with 122 victories."
Being decisive
But it's not just similarities to Perez on the car front that have played their part in the swiftness of Lawson's departure.
For the dithering that Red Bull made in deciding what to do with Perez through his challenging 2024 campaign appears to have triggered a response, so it does not make the same error again.
Last year, Red Bull handed Perez a new contract in the belief it would settle him down and help him perform to his best (it didn't), and then as his pace slumped it kept backing away from dropping him when it had the chance.
The team also got burned by the fact that, just when patience seemed to be running out with what Perez was doing, he would often throw in a strong performance.
This would serve to leave Red Bull feeling that progress was on its way and Perez had turned a corner - only for him then to suffer another run of bad results to keep repeating the cycle.
In the end, the team paid a heavy price because Perez's failure to score impacted its constructors' championship position - as it finished third with 589 points compared to winner McLaren on 666 and second-placed Ferrari on 652.
Considering Perez fell short of champion Verstappen by 285 points in the drivers' championship, it is not hard to understand where Red Bull felt the finger should be pointed for missing out on nearly $20million of prize money.
Laying out the target to Lawson over the winter, Horner had said: "We're not expecting him to beat Max. Max is a generational talent.
"The objective for Liam is to get as close as he can and bag as many points as he can, so that we don't have a 285-point deficit between the cars."
So amid Red Bull's current competitive struggles, where only Verstappen's brilliance means he is eight points behind current leader Lando Norris after the first two grands prix, Lawson's failure to contribute so far will not have been lost amid the memories of last year.
And, with Mercedes looking to have made a step and Ferrari quick on occasion, the risk of dropping to fourth in the standings - or even worse - has clearly also influenced Red Bull's thinking in getting the swap done now.
It was interesting that Lawson, when airing remarks he had made over the China weekend about not having time to learn the car, made reference to the main thing that was missing.
"I don't have time to test the car and get used to it, because we're in the season already," he said. "So each race, we're losing points. That's more or less what I mean when I [say I] don't have time."
Time has already run out though. And Red Bull will now find out, amid the Lawson/Tsunoda swap, just where ultimately its biggest problem lies: with its car or its second driver.
