Red Bull made the first shock move of the season by replacing Liam Lawson with Yuki Tsunoda in the main team, following a disappointing start to the season.
Lawson crashed out of his first race with Red Bull in Melbourne after starting from the pit lane, then in China things did not improve when he dropped out of Q1 and made little progress beyond P15.
Red Bull’s billionare Thai owners voiced concerns over Lawson behind the scenes, and after a crisis summit in Dubai, the team decided to swap the drivers to preserve their chances of winning the Constructors’ Championship.
Lawson has now been demoted to Racing Bulls, while Tsunoda will take up racing with Red Bull at his home race in Japan.
Discussing the swap in an interview with Formel1.de, Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko reveals that Tsunoda ‘secretly expected’ one thing to happen before the swap occured.
Yuki Tsunoda expected driver swap to happen at Red Bull
The swap at Red Bull might have come as a shock to most, given Lawson had only two race weekends to show his talent which is the shortest in the history of the team.
Red Bull is known for making brutal decisions on its drivers, but Marko believes Tsunoda expected to have a swap at some stage during the season if Lawson underperformed.
Christian Hemmervol: “To clarify, even if Yuki didn’t want to [swap], he wouldn’t have been able to say no because the contract allowed Red Bull to freely change drivers, is that correct?”
Marko: “Yes. But with Yuki, he secretly expected that it would happen.”
Red Bull ignored key evidence during pre-season that suggested Liam Lawson would struggle
It might seem like Red Bull’s decision was made in haste, but in reality, the signs were always there during pre-season testing.
Lawson’s times were way off Mercedes and Ferrari, which ended up translating in the first two race weekends when the performance gap was also too big to Max Verstappen.
Honda is now paying double to Red Bull what they were previously offering to have Tsunoda in the car until the end of the season, however, F1 Oversteer understands they are open to swap again if Marko and Horner deem it necessary.
Tsunoda is in the final year of his contract with Red Bull having signed an extension last year, and he now gets to realise the dream that he set out to achieve when he signed to their programme in 2019.
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