Mark Webber on Liam Lawson’s Red Bull struggles: “Losing three-tenths per sector is unacceptable”. Mark Webber Criticizes Liam Lawson's Red Bull Performance.

Former Red Bull man
Mark Webber is certainly someone who knows Red Bull and its internal dynamics very well. The Australian spent the most significant part of his F1 career with the Milton Keynes team as Sebastian Vettel’s teammate. During the four seasons—2010 to 2013—in which the German became world champion, Webber finished third in the championship three times, and in 2010, he was himself in the title fight until the last race.

Speaking on the latest episode of the Formula For Success podcast—created by him and David Coulthard in tribute to the late Eddie Jordan, who was the original host of the podcast alongside DC—the former Australian driver commented on the events surrounding the Austrian-English team, especially the demotion of Liam Lawson after just two races in Racing Bulls, in favor of promoting Japanese driver Yuki Tsunoda, who took the opposite route. Mark Webber himself is no stranger to such situations, as he, as manager of Oscar Piastri, pushed for his client to break ties with Alpine in the summer of 2022, leading him to McLaren with the results we know.

The comparison with Marquez
Webber was harsh on Lawson, calling his performances “unacceptable”: “Now he needs to be freed from the pressure, he needs to have the opportunity to cool down a bit, to return to a smaller team with which he has already gained some experience. He’s only raced two races with the ‘main team,’ but it’s clear that it seems like a very difficult situation. Max is the only one who can extract the lap time from that car.”

“At the moment, he’s losing two or three-tenths per sector,” Mark Webber continued in his analysis, “which is absolutely unacceptable.” The Australian then drew an interesting parallel between the current Red Bull, which only Verstappen can drive, and the last Honda of Marc Marquez before #93’s move to Ducati: “If there was an equivalent of Liam Lawson on a Honda right now, he’d probably hurt himself,” Webber explained, “because he wouldn’t be able to find the speed. When Marquez left Honda, nobody could drive that bike. Only he had figured out how to drive it over the years.”