Helmut Marko says Liam Lawson needs to find more consistency for the F1 2025 season, with the new Red Bull signing’s race performances showing too much “variation.”

Red Bull announced last week that Lawson will become Max Verstappen’s new team-mate for F1 2025 after Sergio Perez vacated his seat.

Helmut Marko: Liam Lawson needs to find more consistency at Red Bull

Lawson’s promotion to the senior team comes after just 11 appearances for the Racing Bulls (previously AlphaTauri/VCARB) junior outfit spread across the 2023 and 2024 campaigns.

Appearing on the Inside Line podcast, Marko challenged Lawson to achieve more consistency on race days as he enters his first full season in F1 2025.

Asked if there is one area for Lawson to improve, he said: “All I would say is that he is more consistent in the races, that he does top times with both types of tyre.

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“There is some sort of variation still but that is [down to his inexperience].

“Liam proved already that he is a very tough racer. He is not shy to fight with big names like he did with [Fernando] Alonso, with [Lewis] Hamilton, also with Perez.

“So now, if he gets a full season, he has to show that he is able to raise the game.

“In qualifying, he was more or less on the same level as Yuki [Tsunoda] and we have to see how much more is coming, to see if he is becoming one of the great drivers.”

Marko’s comments come after Christian Horner, the Red Bull team principal, confirmed that Lawson is expected to fulfill a support role as Verstappen’s new team-mate.

Asked if Lawson has been signed to “complement” Verstappen, Horner told talkSPORT: “Absolutely.

“If you liken it to football, you can’t have two [elite] centre forwards – you’ve got to have strength and depth in your team.

“I think that Liam, with the experience that he has coming into the team, is there to provide that strength in depth in what we need from an engineering perspective, from a tactical perspective, because it’s going to be tight next year.

“You’ve got Ferrari that’ll have [Lewis] Hamilton and [Charles] Leclerc two very strong drivers; you’ve got [Lando] Norris and Oscar Piastri at McLaren.

“There’s contradicting aspects [within F1] because, on the one hand, you’ve got the team and the drivers are contractors to the team.

“On the other side, you’ve got the Drivers’ Championship where the interest and the individual interest is. It’s about communication and being up front with the drivers.

“We’re perhaps slightly different to other teams where we go: ‘Do you know what? Max Verstappen is the most valuable asset in Formula 1. He’s our lead driver. If you can get close to him, fantastic. But the reality is the expectation is for Max to win.’

“A team like Ferrari next year, for example, are going to have two drivers that are going to be taking points off each other – and which horse do you back?

“You have to back both of them, but that sometimes becomes divisive within a team.

“Different teams have different approaches.”

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