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Liam Lawson has a target from Red Bull for the remaining six grands prix of 2024 as it weighs up whether to place him alongside Max Verstappen in its main Formula 1 team next season.
Lawson’s been tasked with performing “at least as well” as Yuki Tsunoda after being drafted in to replace the ousted Daniel Ricciardo at RB for the rest of the season. What that means in real terms, though, is hard to quantify.
It is not just Lawson's performances at RB that will determine Red Bull’s decisions because they will also be influenced by Sergio Perez's performances in the second Red Bull.
And while Lawson has told F1’s podcast that “they want me to match him and basically perform” and “they want points”, it cannot be as simple as that. Partly because RB has not been a point-scoring team since the start of the year (not consistently, anyway) and partly because F1 is rarely so binary.
That Lawson starts his six-race RB stint with a grid penalty at Austin for an engine change – as he inherits Ricciardo’s engine allocation – is an immediate example of that. If he starts behind Tsunoda on the grid through no fault of his own it will be difficult to beat him, and difficult to judge whether he has ‘matched’ Tsunoda.
Factor in that the US Grand Prix is a sprint weekend, and Lawson’s not raced at the Circuit of the Americas before so the format cuts into vital familiarisation time, and his first race back in F1 is fraught with potential hurdles. That’s not something a binary measurement like ‘did he score points’ or ‘did he beat Tsunoda’ can fairly assess.
The simplest outcome is that if Lawson beats Tsunoda six times out of six, he’ll have a very good chance of being in a Red Bull next season. If he doesn't beat Tsunoda once, there's surely no way he's getting promoted, even if Perez struggles. In that situation, Red Bull might actually be more likely to finally relent on giving Tsunoda a chance.
The reality will obviously fall somewhere between those two extremes. Lawson is good enough that it would be surprising if, even in tricky circumstances, he fails to beat Tsunoda at all. He already proved he can do that last season.
It's going to be a decision based as much on subjective evidence as statistics: how quick is Lawson, how does he perform relative to Tsunoda, how good is his feedback, what trajectory is he on over the six races, and of course what does Perez do alongside Verstappen.
The outcome of all that will be an RB seat, or a Red Bull Racing seat, in 2025. Lawson is already playing down thoughts of the latter – which is probably for the best. He just needs to focus on doing the best job possible. The last thing he needs is to get distracted or overreach because he’s dreaming of the future instead of executing the present as well as possible.
“It’s not in my mind but I'm definitely aware that being in the second team to Red Bull Racing, that the future if I do a good job - my goal is to go to Red Bull Racing in the future,” he told the F1 Nation podcast.
“And I know that obviously, from their side as well, they're trying to look for the future of Red Bull racing, for when either Max and Checo eventually go somewhere, then they always need drivers to be ready for that.
“I'm basically aware that if I do a good job, that's where my future is. When that can happen, that's not something I'm really thinking about, because I know that it's going to completely depend on how I go in my current seat.”
Red Bull’s late driver rejig with its second team is part of a bigger picture. It is trying to properly resolve a long-running issue with its driver choices, which it has been papering over for years with short-term solutions.
Picking Sergio Perez to replace Alex Albon then extending Perez’s contract twice, letting Pierre Gasly join another team, leaving Tsunoda marooned at the second team, hiring then firing Nyck de Vries, and re-signing then firing Ricciardo, have all been consequences of Red Bull’s uncertain driver situation across its two teams.
Lawson has been on that rollercoaster too, having subbed for Ricciardo for five races last year when Ricciardo got injured during the third event of his own comeback. After Lawson scored points in Singapore and fared well against Tsunoda, Red Bull promised to find him a drive in the future – but passed over him for 2024, to keep Ricciardo alongside Tsunoda.
Red Bull’s driver strategy has been flawed, and confused, for too long. It is trying to untangle that and the Ricciardo/Lawson switch is a key step. The problem is that every potential solution Red Bull has now with the drivers creates another short-term problem.
If it does decide Lawson needs to be in the Red Bull next season, who it partners Tsunoda with RB is unclear. It doesn’t feel like Red Bull is sold on F2 title challenger Isack Hadjar (even though the Red Bull philosophy of old would be that Hadjar’s in the second team no question when a seat opens up). And Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko has even made noises about Williams junior Franco Colapinto, who has impressed in a surprise F1 stint in place of Logan Sargeant for the rest of 2024 himself.
If Colapinto doesn’t take the currently vacant Sauber/Audi seat in 2025, it’s not impossible Red Bull tries to lure him away from Williams with an RB drive. That would reflect poorly on Red Bull and its junior programme if it has to go outside its pool and overlook its own young driver who was beating Colapinto in Formula 2 this year.
That's all secondary to the main focus, though: setting up the main team for the future. Marko said recently: “You can rely on youth – there is a certain risk, but it is manageable and worth it.”
Red Bull used to back up such talk with action. Lawson might be the first big beneficiary of a return to that mentality, if he can make the most of the opportunity that starts this weekend in Austin.
