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Liam Lawson has the toughest job in Formula 1. That is how Red Bull itself describes being Max Verstappen’s team-mate.
Lawson, who turns 23 next month, will be Verstappen’s sixth team-mate in F1. And how he fares will be crucial to both Red Bull’s championship ambitions and his own career trajectory.
History is not much on Lawson’s side. Sergio Perez’s stint may have come to a premature end, but at four seasons it was the longest a driver has managed alongside Verstappen and he became the first Red Bull driver to finish second in the world championship.
Twelve months later, he was gone. It happens to them all eventually – they are either pushed or jump before they can be. Lawson either needs to buck the trend, or it's a matter of how much he can achieve before fate intervenes.
STRONG BUT A NUISANCE
The ideal for Lawson is to hold his own against Verstappen, run him close in both qualifying and in races.
That’s a tall order given there are few drivers, if any, who could beat Verstappen across a season nowadays. And it hasn’t happened since his first full year alongside Daniel Ricciardo in 2017.
The stronger a Verstappen team-mate is, the bigger the nuisance they are. In early 2018, Ricciardo’s strong form played a role in Verstappen’s early run of errors, which snowballed until he finally turned things around. Then Verstappen’s superiority, and the way the wind was blowing internally, was a key factor in Ricciardo jumping ship to Renault.
Perez had moments like that too: think of his Baku 2023 win (which ultimately sparked Verstappen's crushing form the rest of that season) or the Monaco qualifying crash that secured third on the grid ahead of Verstappen, from where he won the grand prix - which angered the Verstappen camp so much.
Carlos Sainz is the better example of the team-mate who could (more or less) match Verstappen not just occasionally beat him. Verstappen’s first F1 team-mate, Sainz was three years older and more experienced in single-seaters, although both were F1 rookies: and in their year-and-a-bit together, the comparable stats slightly favoured Sainz in qualifying and Verstappen in the races.
That came at a price (which set the tone for Verstappen's future team-mates). Sainz’s competitiveness on-track and off it, and the associated internal tensions, is ultimately why he was never on a trajectory for the senior team when he was a Red Bull junior and racing for Toro Rosso even after Verstappen got his own promotion.
And it is why even though Sainz was a free agent for most of last year, was keen on Red Bull, and would have been a perfect team-mate for Verstappen in performance terms, he was not someone Red Bull wanted to bring back into the fold.
Lawson would love to prove himself a Sainz-level driver, or have the peaks of others, it just might come with some other complications either for him or for Red Bull.
A SUPPORT ACT (WHO GETS GROUND DOWN?)
A type of team-mate that Red Bull would probably take is if Lawson is more in the Ricciardo (or even peak Perez) mould.
2016-2018 Ricciardo would be the ideal: quick, wins races, scores podiums, gets the odd pole, runs Verstappen close, but Verstappen ultimately has him at arm's length.
But Ricciardo found even over their time together, and this was against a lesser version of Max versus the kind of driver he is now, that he was gradually worn away in that environment, and realised it was only going one way.
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He wasn't going to top Verstappen within the Red Bull family. So he was better off putting himself first, finding another project, getting the kind of recompense he felt he deserved, and seeing if the grass was greener somewhere else.
It was a conscious version of the realities that Alex Albon, Pierre Gasly and now Perez found themselves in, and a little bit more akin to Sainz, except Ricciardo was in a much better position and commanded something stronger – even though, ironically, he went to the same team that Sainz had done!
The alternative is, much like with Perez, Lawson could have a strong two or three years alongside Verstappen but ultimately reach a ceiling, either in his own performance or in what being in that environment can offer him, what he can get out of it and what he can offer to it.
Perez had a more overt decline than Ricciardo. And when you factor in the different levels of competitiveness of the team in their respective eras, Perez also didn't have quite the same peaks and he had a lower floor.
But it's broadly in the same vein in that Perez withstood the brutality of being Verstappen’s team-mate longer than anybody else, and dealt with the pressure, the scrutiny and the pummelling pretty effectively a lot of the time: a little bit like Valtteri Bottas did next to lewis Hamilton at Mercedes.
And that can have its use to Red Bull. It certainly wouldn't mind if Lawson lasted several years and finished second in the drivers’ championship! But even within the peak of Perez, there was that nagging reality, that inevitability that ultimately Perez, wasn't going to be enough when it counted.
He was fundamentally a little bit different to Ricciardo, even if they do fall into the same broader bracket of ‘effective team-mate who got ground down in the end in their own way’.
Lawson will want to avoid that outcome even if it would serve a purpose for Red Bull in the short to medium-term.
ANOTHER BURNED JUNIOR?
Although different stylistically and in personality, Lawson has some obvious similarities with the two most recently promoted Red Bull juniors: Gasly and Albon.
22-year-old Lawson is closer to those drivers in the age and experience with which he arrives at Red Bull, but in arguably a tougher situation. Gasly came into Formula 1 towards the end of 2017, then had a full season in the second team before moving to Red Bull. Like Lawson, his progression was accelerated due to circumstances involving the other Red Bull driver (in Gasly’s case, Ricciardo leaving to join Renault). But he had more F1 experience to try to deal with that.
Albon was a complete rookie when he came (back) into the Red Bull family and Formula 1, and had not driven an F1 car before pre-season testing, but he was starting in the second team so by the time he got his mid-season promotion to replace Gasly, he'd racked up 12 starts. So, Albon ended up being more experienced on his arrival to Red Bull than Lawson will be in March.
Still, you can see similarities in what brought these three into F1 and how equipped they were to deal with it. The key in terms of whether Lawson’s chance ends the same way (ultimately being chewed up and spat out) will not be the similarities but the differences.
Lawson is stepping into the role with the least experience of any driver Red Bull has promoted from its junior team, but to assist with that, Red Bull insists it will manage expectations for Lawson as just the ‘second driver’, a support act to Verstappen.
His job is to back Verstappen up more effectively than Perez did in 2024 and support a championship bid if Red Bull’s car is capable of one. There is pressure, inevitably, but the logic is there will be less than before because he is not required to match Verstappen or challenge him.
That didn’t help Gasly or Albon, though. Red Bull was not a title challenger in either of the two seasons they drove for the team, but they still got the chop when it became clear they could not perform in that environment to the level required.
So, if Lawson’s not quick enough, or doesn’t bag the results, simply not having to be at Verstappen’s level will not be enough.
Plus, personality is an inevitable factor. Red Bull criticised Gasly for the demands he put on the team in terms of set-up and comfort, which were not felt to actually be relevant or beneficial. Albon was a more naturally popular team member, if a bit too quiet.
Lawson’s confidence has been lauded and his on-track approach has been more aggressive than when Gasly and Albon entered F1. Maybe that was a consequence of him having two cameos to make a name for himself, but it looks like Lawson will be combative when he can be. Will that help? Will that hinder, if it gets him into scrapes that he or Red Bull can’t afford?
Lawson must go into this expecting to last longer than Gasly and Albon did and backing himself to be at the upper end of Red Bull’s and his own expectations.
Gasly and Albon have had to rebuild their F1 reputations in the midfield after being dropped by Red Bull Racing. Defeat to Verstappen is not a one-way ticket to the scrapheap but the burned junior needing a comeback is a genre of team-mate Lawson will be keen to avoid.
