With Red Bull set to make a call on whether or not to replace Liam Lawson as Max Verstappen’s teammate, what is it about the Dutch driver that makes him so difficult to race alongside?

Max Verstappen is likely to have a new teammate for the Japanese Grand Prix, with Red Bull seemingly set to swap their new rookie Liam Lawson – who had been lined up alongside Verstappen at the senior team – with the more experienced Yuki Tsunoda at Racing Bulls.

Calum Nicholas: Max Verstappen’s teammates struggle with his resilience

If the changes are made as expected, it would spell a very rapid conclusion to Lawson’s initial chance at the senior team, with the Kiwi driver having struggled for form and pace during his first two race weekends alongside Verstappen.

While the Dutch driver was challenging for the win in Australia and for the podium in China, Lawson was knocked out as the slowest driver of all in both qualifying sessions in Shanghai, followed by a tepid race outside the points.

It has been the worst-case scenario for Red Bull, who expected more from the highly-rated Lawson, but it appears the team is set to acknowledge that it’s been too much, too soon, for the Kiwi racer.

These aren’t unfamiliar waters for Red Bull, who are witnessing another driver struggle alongside the four-time F1 World Champion Max Verstappen. Lawson was only brought into contention as Red Bull parted ways with Sergio Perez, the experienced Mexican driver who had been under contract until 2026, due to Perez’s form falling off a cliff during the last season.

Perez himself had been an external hire for Red Bull for 2021, following two years of trying to find a driver from their own programme who could perform at a level close to the then-titleless Verstappen. Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon, both now highly-rated racers for Alpine and Williams, respectively, struggled and faded alongside Verstappen.

Speaking on the High Performance podcast, Red Bull ambassador and former power unit technician Calum Nicholas opened up on what he sees as being the traits of Verstappen that mean his teammates get inside their own heads, and crumble.

“I think one of the things that Max has never been worried about is anyone going faster than him,” he said.

“He knows how skilled he is, and it’s a bit of a luxury for him – he knows, if you can find that lap time, he can find a bit more.

“I think, more than anything, it’s resilience. What we’ve seen, certainly with Max’s teammates over the years, is I think what they struggle with is how resilient Max is.

“Like if you have a bad weekend where the car is not great, Max will drag something out of it. I think, for a lot of the drivers that have sat alongside him in the garage, it’s really hard to see.

“It’s really hard to sort of suck up – you might go out and put a great lap in and you think, ‘God, I’ve dragged the most out of that car’, and then Max will find two-tenths on you. Mentally, it really takes its toll on people around him through no fault of Max’s. He’s just there to go the quickest. But it’s a tough one for people to swallow.”

With Verstappen’s teammates then digging ever deeper to try to contend with his pace and results, a task made very difficult by his generational talent, mistakes then creep in.

“It becomes like a real vicious cycle,” Nicholas said.

“You overdrive the car, you’re not going to go quicker. You’re probably going to go slower, and you’re going to make mistakes, and then those mistakes put more scrutiny on you.”

Perez, Nicholas postulated, was able to use his experience to stave off this cycle until after a few years at Red Bull had passed but, inevitably, he too crumbled eventually.

“It’s really tough. Checo’s [Perez] vast experience, I think that he was probably the best person to try to keep up with Max,” he said.

“In the way that Max got into other people’s heads, I didn’t think it would affect Checo.

“I think it took a long time until it [did]. Checo, I think, is very resilient and I appreciate that.

“When Checo first came in, and he was finding his way into the team and putting himself in that position, I think that he did a great job of that and not bowing to the pressure, not letting it get in his head.

“But I think there comes a point where you’re like, ‘Look, I’m in a position where this car can win World Championships, and I want to win a World Championship’ and, obviously, that’s a huge weight when the whole of Mexico wants you to do that as well.

“The problem is that you’re up against the guy that is very, very hard to beat. That’s the killer – once you’ve got it in your head that ‘I can win a World Championship’, but actually, the guy next to you is not going to allow that because he is going to find more time than you. It’s going to get to you eventually.”

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With Verstappen delivering upon his potential – which was spotted immediately during his year at Toro Rosso in 2015 – to become a now-four-time F1 World Champion with the possibility of many more, Nicholas said it’s clear the Dutch driver has evolved his raw talent into something altogether more formidable.

“All of us from 2016, that first race with the team, I think it was so obvious that there was just like this raw, untamed talent in Max that was going to be incredible,” he said.

“Obviously, after that win, the rest of 2016 and 2017 – car failures and crashes and things like that, I think what’s made Max so great now is that he’s mastered all those other little things.

“His awareness of what else is going on in a race, his ability to control a race.

“The thing that you’ve seen in past champions is that it’s not just about one bit of talent or speed or whatever it is – they manage everything in the paddock so well and, certainly, we’ve watched Max mature into this guy that just seems untouchable.”

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