Liam Lawson featured in his first official sessions as a Red Bull driver this week. He edged former Racing Bulls teammate Yuki Tsunoda in the battle to partner Max Verstappen following Sergio Perez’s exit.
Lawson debuted the RB21 on Wednesday morning before driving the car for the whole of Thursday. Thus, his test concluded earlier than most of his rivals.
Jolyon Palmer said Red Bull were favouring Verstappen with their chosen run plan. It gave the world champion the chance to drive the car in the most advanced specification.
Of course, Lawson will have to get used to that. Given his inexperience, Christian Horner knows that the team’s best hope of winning one or both championships is maximising Verstappen’s potential.
Lawson’s best lap of the test was a 1:30.252 on day two, which ranks him down in 11th. But headline lap times aren’t everything, with Lando Norris as low as 17th.
Despite that, McLaren are seen as the pacesetters heading to the Australian Grand Prix. The consensus places Red Bull second, Mercedes third and Ferrari fourth.
Red Bull plummet down pecking order when Liam Lawson drives, rival team member jokes
According to ESPN, Red Bull’s pace in Bahrain was ‘a hard one to make sense of’. The overall feeling is that the new RB21 ‘might not be the quickest’.
However, it should still be good enough for Verstappen, arguably the most complete driver on the grid right now, to win some early races. The Dutchman endured a 10-race winless run last year, so this wasn’t a given.
As such, Red Bull are partly ‘relieved’ that they’re in contention. But Lawson’s individual prospects are uncertain.
One unnamed figure from a rival team joked that the car looked like a ‘world-beater’ when Verstappen was driving, but only fourth-fastest at the hands of Lawson. That sounds ‘harsh’, but is perhaps to be expected from a youngster who’s only completed 11 laps.
Liam Lawson has secured a dream move to Red Bull, but there’s a ‘catch’
Karun Chandhok is concerned that Lawson may burn out after joining Red Bull so early. It’s worth remembering that Horner and Helmut Marko weren’t planning to promote one of their junior drivers.
They initially handed Sergio Perez a two-year contract extension, which appeared to close the door. The problem was that Perez’s performances deteriorated so badly that his position was no longer tenable.
Lawson now finds himself with a huge opportunity to stand on the podium for the first time this year, or even win a race. As recently as the start of September, he wasn’t on the grid at all.
However, Guenther Steiner says there’s a ‘catch’ for Lawson. Even if he is unexpectedly ‘super good’ at the outset, he will inevitably have ‘a lot to learn’.
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