For six successive Formula 1 seasons, Max Verstappen has blown away every Red Bull team-mate he’s had, leading to the team discarding all three of them.
Liam Lawson hopes to break that trend in 2025 but how has his preparation started?
Lawson’s fastest lap in Bahrain placed him 11 out of the 20 drivers (six tenths slower than Verstappen) while only an illness-stricken Lance Stroll completed fewer laps.
It was far from an ideal start but the headline testing times are deceiving given Lawson didn’t take part in the final day and had much of his running compromised by rain, some niggling Red Bull reliability problems and the time required for Red Bull to reconfigure its car for experiments.
Making any direct comparisons to Verstappen from testing would be foolish, not least because the track conditions between Lawson’s full day of running on Thursday and Verstappen’s Friday were polar opposites.
The Race’s F1 team on the ground spotted Lawson fighting with the RB21 snapping mid-corner on occasion but there were plenty of moments for Verstappen, too.
That appeared to be evidence of an unruly RB21 that Red Bull was pushing and experimenting with to find the right set-up window, rather than any (metaphorical) red flags for Lawson.
Team boss Christian Horner also singled out Lawson’s technical feedback for praise and said it’s “consistent with what Max is saying” - backing up a theory that's existed at Red Bull since last year that Lawson could be more compatible than his predecessors.
An important difference
Lawson's 'race zero' is certainly a far cry from the kind of rocky pre-season that immediately put Pierre Gasly on the back foot for his ill-fated part-season alongside Verstappen in 2019.
Gasly crashed twice in pre-season in 2019 while Lawson was free of major errors despite some obvious signs of him pushing the car close to the limit.
Lawson has also so far avoided another Gasly flaw, one that appeared to increasingly creep into Sergio Perez’s 2024 season, too - namely tension in the garage.
“They’ve very pleased with the way he [Lawson] has come in and the breath of fresh air within the garage because, not to say Checo was too difficult or anything like that, but I think over the course of last year that was the situation. It was a bit more tense, strained. People were at odds with each other and it didn’t need to be that way,” Scott Mitchell-Malm reported on The Race F1 Podcast after testing.
“It’s a clean slate for everybody now.
“There was nothing alarming in the data in any of the comparisons that are tentatively possible beyond the limitations that seem to exist in the Red Bull.
“There were a couple of times that Lawson had snaps mid-corner that meant a little bit of laptime bleed and that sort of thing. But he seems quite calm and confident, and even said he feels like he’s going into the season in a good place.”
Of course that’s partly because Lawson is yet to go up against Verstappen. Many a Red Bull driver has entered a season with the feeling they can take the fight to Verstappen, only to come away destroyed.
One key difference with Lawson at least is that he’s not going into this season aiming to beat Verstappen - nor is Red Bull expecting him to.
For now it wants a steady number two driver who can reliably help support Verstappen and the team’s quest for championships, something Lawson has started well.
“I’m getting the impression that Lawson isn’t drowning in the situation he finds himself in,” Mitchell-Malm added.
“I still feel like after a first compromised test with Red Bull, he’s got a little bit of momentum in himself but it’s going to be how that actually translates when everybody is competing for those final tenths of a second because that’s my main question on Lawson.
“I think he’s quite a robust driver, an aggressive driver, he has a good strong mentality - but if you’re lacking a couple of tenths to Verstappen it isn’t going to matter.”
What’s the benchmark?
Perez’s average qualifying gap to Verstappen during their four years together was 0.452 seconds but it was the 0.545s deficit in 2024 that was the final straw.
That’s an immediate bar for Lawson to clear to prove that he’s at least an upgrade on what came before.
Similarly, Perez contributing fewer than 26% of Red Bull’s 2024 points is another decent bar. That’s the same points figure as Gasly in early 2019, with Albon acquiring 33% of points in his 2019-20 stint. Perez’s 40% points in 2022 remains the watermark and would surely be an instant re-sign situation should Lawson repeat it.
In terms of qualifying, Gasly was 0.567s slower than Verstappen during their 12 races together in 2019 and his successor Albon was 0.429s slower in the rest of 2019 but then an untenable 0.671s slower in 2020.
Perez’s 2021 start is the gold star standard one-lap pace wise. Across the opening three races he was only 0.086s slower than Verstappen in qualifying before a series of thumping qualifying defeats followed.
But even Perez was knocked out in Q2 in his Red Bull first qualifying in Bahrain 2021, Gasly failed to make it out of Q1 in 2019 - while Albon’s Red Bull qualifying debut (a Q2 exit at Spa) was meaningless because of engine penalties.
If Lawson can make it to Q3 smoothly in Australia, that will be a first. Thereafter success is far from guaranteed as it's all about consistently staying close to a driver notorious for finding extra gears and moving with the in-season development far better than his team-mates.
Perez’s Red Bull peaks were brilliant. It’s easy to forget given his late-2024 struggles but there were times through 2021-early 2023 in particular that Perez even gave Verstappen a headache.
It just doesn’t count for anything when you can’t keep up with the evolution of the car and the new demands it produces. Lawson’s feedback being similar to Verstappen will at least be a glint of hope that he can move with the development better.
We can’t know if Lawson will encounter the same fate as Gasly/Albon/Perez or what his ultimate ceiling is, but he’s so far given himself a fighting chance of at least starting off on the right foot.
