Red Bull’s expected move of replacing Sergio Perez with Liam Lawson could prove “short sighted” if Max Verstappen leaves the team ahead of the F1 2026 season.

That is the opinion of former F1 mechanic, Marc Priestley, who believes Lawson does not merit a promotion to Red Bull on the evidence of his career to date.

Could Max Verstappen make Red Bull’s Sergio Perez decision look short sighted?

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

PlanetF1.com revealed earlier this month that Red Bull were set to replace Perez for the F1 2025 season, with Racing Bulls star Lawson highly likely to become Verstappen’s new team-mate.

If Lawson is promoted as Perez’s replacement, his place at Racing Bulls is set to be inherited by Isack Hadjar, the 20-year-old French-Algerian who finished second in this year’s F2 standings.

Sergio Perez’s decision to step away from Red Bull comes at the end of a year in which Verstappen has been frequently linked with a move away from the Milton Keynes-based team.

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Toto Wolff, the Mercedes boss, made no secret of his desire to sign Verstappen before electing to promoted teenage sensation Andrea Kimi Antonelli as Ferrari-bound Lewis Hamilton’s successor for F1 2025.

With the precise length of Antonelli’s contract unspecified, however, and George Russell’s current deal set to expire at the end of next year, Mercedes could look to renew their interest in Verstappen ahead of the F1 2026 regulation changes, for which the team’s preparations are believed to be advanced.

Despite being under contract until the end of the F1 2028 season, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner told media including PlanetF1.com in August that Verstappen’s contract contains a “performance element”, which could potentially allow him to leave the team before its end date.

A report by a respected British newspaper claimed recently that Verstappen’s exit clause will allow him to walk away from Red Bull if he is outside the top three of the Drivers’ standings after a significant portion of the season has been completed in F1 2025.

If true, this arrangement would mirror a clause widely reported to have been included in one of Verstappen’s previous Red Bull deals.

Marc Priestley, who previously worked as a mechanic for the McLaren team, has claimed that Red Bull do not have a “natural successor” for Perez, with Lawson and Racing Bulls team-mate Yuki Tsunoda not doing enough not merit a promotion for F1 2025.

And he fears Red Bull could be left without an elite driver if Verstappen opts to leave the team within the next 12 months.

He told Casino Uden Rofus: “It’s not a major surprise [that Red Bull and Perez parted ways].

“The only surprise with the Sergio Perez situation is that it’s taken this long for a decision to be made.

“It (was) clearly a lot more complicated behind the scenes instead of the decision being made on the driver’s performance. Otherwise, with Red Bull’s history, Perez would have been gone a long time ago.

“Red Bull never had a natural successor for Sergio Perez’s seat.

“If you look at the Red Bull junior programme, the whole point is to find the next Max Verstappen or Sebastian Vettel and they don’t have one of those right now.

“Bringing in Liam Lawson as a number-two driver might turn out to be quite short sighted as Verstappen could be elsewhere in 2026.

“I don’t think Liam Lawson has done enough to grab that seat, but Perez’s poor results have opened the door for him to take this opportunity.”

“It will always seem unfair on the driver who missed out on the seat, but I don’t think Yuki Tsunoda or Liam Lawson deserved that Red Bull seat.

“When Max Verstappen came into F1, he grabbed people’s attention and made them sit on the edge of their seats.

“I don’t think you can say that either Tsunoda or Lawson have done that.”

Earlier this season, former F1 team owner Eddie Jordan claimed Wolff met with Mercedes chief executive Ola Kallenius, as well as one-third team owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe of INEOS, in Monaco to prepare a “fighting fund” to cover Verstappen’s salary in the event of his departure from Red Bull.

Verstappen confirmed this week that he has held “very constructive conversations” with Mercedes, but stressed his loyalty to Red Bull after claiming a fourth consecutive World Championship in F1 2024.

He told Dutch station Viaplay: “The big teams are always interesting, but on the other hand, I’m also in a very big team.

“I’ve achieved a lot of success with them, it also just feels like a second family.

“Of course we always talk to each other and I don’t lie about the fact that we’ve sat together. We had very constructive conversations [with Mercedes], I think everyone has always been very honest and open with each other.

“But on the other hand, I am also very loyal to my own team and I just feel at home there. So there is actually not much to achieve at the moment.

“I am still very young, so a lot can still happen in the future.”

Red Bull passed up the chance to sign Carlos Sainz earlier this year, with the outgoing Ferrari driver agreeing a multi-year contract to join Williams from F1 2025.

Verstappen and Sainz previously partnered each other at Racing Bulls (then Toro Rosso) in 2015/16 before the former graduated to a race seat with Red Bull’s senior team.

Verstappen’s relationship with Sainz at Toro Rosso has been the subject of much intrigue over the years, with Red Bull widely believed to be wary of reuniting the pair following inter-team tensions across 2015/16.

A book released last year shed light on the root of the tensions between the drivers, with Verstappen and his engineers granted “cart blanche” to make their own strategic decisions by Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko – even if it meant ignoring the instructions of the Toro Rosso management.

The situation came to a head at the 2016 Russian Grand Prix, Verstappen’s final race for Toro Rosso before his promotion to Red Bull, where he returned to the track ahead of Sainz in qualifying in a breach of a pre-arranged team agreement.

While Verstappen qualified inside the top 10, Sainz was eliminated in Q2 after encountering traffic during his final run.

The ensuing row with then-team principal Franz Tost resulted in a number of key figures on Verstappen’s side of the Toro Rosso garage, including race engineer Xevi Pujolar, leaving the team.

Marko is said to have then played an instrumental role in Pujolar securing a new role at Sauber, where he continues to work as racing director.

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