Despite having competed in only 11 Grands Prix, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner and advisor Helmut Marko decided that Lawson would be Verstappen’s new teammate this season, following Sergio Perez’s departure at the end of last year.
Horner advised Liam Lawson to focus solely on his own performance without being distracted by what Verstappen does on the other side of the garage. However, that will be easier said than done. All of Verstappen’s previous teammates—Daniel Ricciardo, Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, and Sergio Perez—were judged based on the Dutchman’s performances, and according to former Red Bull driver David Coulthard, it will be no different for Lawson.
“With only 10 or 11 races under his belt, I don’t think that really matters. He will still be directly compared to Max,” David Coulthard said during an episode of the RacingNews365 podcast. “If he gets close to Max or beats him, he will have a long career in Formula 1. If he doesn’t, the bell will toll, and the next contender will arrive.”
“Being a rookie is not a valid excuse”
In the days leading up to the three days of testing in Bahrain and during the sessions themselves, there was much discussion about the fact that rookies would have only a day and a half behind the wheel to get familiar with their car for this season.
However, drivers have access to simulation tools and past-season cars, thanks to the Testing of Previous Cars regulations, which allow them to get accustomed to the machinery as quickly as possible ahead of the season’s first Grand Prix, set for March 16 in Australia.
For this reason, according to David Coulthard, being a rookie today is no excuse: “Adaptability is part of a driver’s skill set,” he said. “Ayrton Senna, one of the greatest—perhaps the greatest—jumped straight from F3 to Formula 1.
“Kimi Räikkönen went directly from Formula Renault to Formula 1. There are other examples… I myself did three years of testing with Williams, driving for Mansell, Prost, and Senna. But the first time I drove the FW16, the ’94 car, was when I left the pit lane for qualifying in Barcelona because, during pre-season testing, Ayrton and Damon [Hill] had filled the testing schedule.” – he pointed out – “So I had never driven that car before and went straight into qualifying. I wasn’t a rookie, but it was a completely new car, and I had four sets of tires and one hour to figure it out. You just have to go out and do it. So, I’d say that being a rookie nowadays is no longer an acceptable excuse!” – the former Formula 1 driver concluded.
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