Liam Lawson will return to Racing Bulls for the Japanese Grand Prix, it was confirmed this week. Yuki Tsunoda replaces him at Red Bulll just two races into the 2025 season.
Lawson has been the victim of one of the most brutal driver calls in F1 history. Red Bull clearly saw evidence in his demeanour and/or his data to suggest that he’d take too long to turn his fortunes around, if he ever managed it at all.
The New Zealander’s qualifying results so far read 18th, 20th, 20th. In mitigation, he hadn’t driven the Albert Park or Shanghai circuits before, but Christian Horner was still entitled to expect better.
As for the races, Lawson crashed out on his Australia debut and failed to mount a meaningful fightback in either of last weekend’s events. He was 15th at the chequered flag on Sunday, though that later became 12th thanks to disqualifications.
The December decision was always a gamble given that Lawson had only started 11 F1 races. They hoped that he had the resilience and the adaptability to thrive, but Helmut Marko now admits Red Bull made a mistake.
Cadillac F1’s Mario Andretti says Liam Lawson accidentally helped Sergio Perez
Speaking on the ESPN Racing podcast, 1978 F1 world champion Mario Andretti suggested that Lawson shouldn’t have got the seat in the first place. He felt Tsunoda was more deserving.
The Japanese driver was far more experienced with nearly 90 race starts and he’d outperformed Lawson in their Racing Bulls head-to-head. Red Bull surely now regret overlooking the Japanese driver, even though they tried to rectify their error quickly.
Significantly, Andretti is an advisor to the Cadillac team, who will enter F1 next year. Sergio Perez’s sponsors have held talks with Cadillac after Lawson replaced him.
But Lawson has made the case for Cadillac to sign Perez, albeit accidentally, by struggling even more alongside Max Verstappen. This wasn’t lost on Andretti.
“All I can say is that Liam Lawson is making Checo look very, very good,” he said. “Tsunoda, you know, I think he probably deserved that seat more than Liam. But who am I?”
Sergio Perez didn’t want Red Bull to hire Yuki Tsunoda – here’s why
It’s worth remembering that Perez went out in Q1 himself six times last season and failed to score in exactly a third of the races. But his Red Bull career also yielded five wins and 29 podium finishes.
The consensus is that Cadillac want an experienced driver to reliably bring home points while a young American adapts on the other side of the garage. Perez ranks inside the all-time top 10 for starts on 281 and has finished 243 of those races.
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One Mexican journalist recently claimed that Perez didn’t want Red Bull to hire Tsunoda. He feared that they’d simply ‘get rid of him’ in time, leaving yet another driver burned.
There’s a theory that Perez contributed to Lawson’s struggles by providing limited feedback to engineers last season. Thus they weren’t sure how to develop the evident handling gremlins out of the car.
