It’s only been three months since Red Bull announced Liam Lawson as Max Verstappen’s new teammate. Yet, less than a hundred days later, the New Zealand driver’s adventure with the Milton Keynes team is already over, as Red Bull confirmed yet another mid-season change this morning.
Lawson will take a step back and return to Racing Bulls, while Yuki Tsunoda will move up to the parent team, facing the challenge that will define his career. This move also carries a subtle irony, as just three months ago, Lawson was preferred to the Japanese driver not only for his mental strength but also for the potential seen in both drivers.
During his brief stint in Faenza, Lawson showed he was close to Tsunoda in terms of performance, despite having only eleven races under his belt compared to Tsunoda’s four full seasons. Red Bull saw more potential in the New Zealander, hoping he could become a medium-to-long-term solution.
Three months later, however, the situation has completely reversed, but the circumstances are entirely different. The gamble didn’t pay off, and Milton Keynes has switched to yet another change, which feels more like a team casting a line, hoping something will bite, rather than a well-thought-out move, even though Yuki Tsunoda has shown his qualities.
Both before the season started and after the Australian GP, Red Bull’s top brass had assured that Lawson would be given time to adapt, expecting him to perform on tracks he already knew. Yet, his adventure ended before he even arrived at a familiar track. What changed in the meantime?
Where Verstappen shines, Lawson struggles
After the first two races, Helmut Marko, always direct and sharp in his comments, described Lawson as a boxer on the ropes in a negative spiral, paradoxically what should have been his strength—his adaptability. But what weighed heavily was the data analysis and the lack of marked progress, at a time when Red Bull feels it cannot afford to waste time and points.
Time, the same that Lawson asked for after the Chinese GP, well aware that his seat was already at risk, but also that his start had not been without problems. During the tests, he was slowed down by a hydraulic failure, and in Australia, he missed an entire free practice session due to a Power Unit failure.
Clearly, this doesn’t explain the New Zealander’s difficulties, but it adds more fuel to the fire. A driver with little experience needs to run continuously. If you add to that the fact that the RB21 has proven to be a car difficult to master, the scenario becomes even more complicated, giving a clearer picture of his struggles.
Analyzing the data from the first weekend in Melbourne, a key element immediately emerged, later found in China: not only did pure performance lack, but also the ease of putting together a lap. Although Lawson missed FP3, his difficulties in qualifying showed the limitations in driving the RB21.
To avoid elimination, Lawson was already pushing the limit in Q1, yet his references were worse than those of Verstappen, who was still far from his maximum potential. This was evident in slow corners like turn 3 or turn 11, where it is crucial to carry speed through the corner after a heavy braking zone, but also in medium and high-speed sections like turn 6 and the 9/10 sequence.
The gaps became even wider when Max went for the limit in Q3. Even though the track improved, in certain corners, like 1, 6, and 10, the gap between them opened up to over 10 km/h. Too much.
Liam Lawson at the limit: a mix of factors
However, the problem wasn’t just performance, but also how difficult it was for Liam to put together a clean lap, confirming not only how challenging the RB21 is to handle despite the winter changes, but also how the driver himself was “overdriving” in an attempt to find time.
Indeed, his last qualifying lap in Australia, which was used as a reference as it was improving, was not completed due to two mistakes: a slight error in turn 10 and a lock-up in the penultimate corner.
This theme also resurfaced in the Sprint qualifying on Friday in China, where, once again, he couldn’t lower his time due to a mistake entering turn 9, where he carried too much speed and ended up wide beyond the curb. Not by chance, the next day, despite registering higher minimum speeds in the same section, he suffered from traction on exit due to a far-from-perfect setup.
Out of the three qualifying sessions completed with Red Bull, in two of them he failed to improve on his final attempt due to errors that confirmed he was already at the limit. Only in one qualifying session, the one for the race in China, did Lawson lower his time on his final attempt, but his references against Max Verstappen didn’t play in his favor.
While in Australia, Liam struggled both in slow sections and low-speed corners, in Shanghai, the scenarios changed slightly, but the common point remained: the difficulty in getting the car into the corner. This is noticeable, for example, in the way he handled turn 1 and the change of direction in the 2/3 complex, where the gap reached about 15 km/h.
Where not much steering angle is required, such as in the high-speed sections of turns 7 and 8, Lawson managed to show good references. However, as soon as the challenge became about attacking and pushing into the corner, the difference with Verstappen increased. It’s no secret that the Dutchman makes a precise front end one of the key elements of his driving style, but his ability also lies in going beyond the problems in certain circumstances, still managing to carry a lot of speed into corners.
Liam Lawson seemed to have greater difficulty from the start, suffering more than his teammate from the RB21’s instability in areas where Max, on the other hand, makes the difference. The problem thus extends over three key points: lack of progress, the gap from the front, and difficulties in handling a car that bites. Part of the mistakes seem to be driven by the desire to go beyond, but this resulted in the opposite effect.
After the Chinese GP, Liam Lawson asked for time. This didn’t happen, and Red Bull opted for another mid-season change, turning to someone they had dropped only a few months ago, desperately searching for an immediate solution to a much broader issue.
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