Former Red Bull driver Sergio Perez will be “laughing his head off” over his replacement Liam Lawson’s Q1 exit at the Australian Grand Prix.

That is the claim of Sky F1 reporter Ted Kravitz, who says Lawson cannot allow his qualifying performance to become “a pattern” during the F1 2025 season.

Ted Kravitz: Sergio Perez will be amused by Liam Lawson Q1 exit

Lawson was confirmed as Max Verstappen’s new team-mate last December, just days after Perez vacated his Red Bull seat following a punishing 2024 season.

Perez’s exit came just six months after he signed a new two-year contract until the end of the 2026 season, with Red Bull striking an agreement for the Mexican driver to step down from his race seat.

Lawson, who is racing at the Albert Park circuit for the first time this weekend, has endured a tricky start to his Red Bull career in Melbourne.

Red Bull F1 2025 head to head: Max Verstappen takes early lead over Liam Lawson

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

👉 Revealed: Why there is more to the RB21 than meets the eye

Having missed the final practice session due to an engine issue, Lawson could only manage 18th in Q1.

Lawson had been set to improve on his final lap of the first qualifying session, but a wide moment at the penultimate corner left him a second adrift of Verstappen and ahead only of Haas pair Esteban Ocon and Oliver Bearman, who failed to set a time due to a gearbox issue.

Appearing on his Ted’s Notebook Sky F1 show, Kravitz quipped that Perez will have been left amused by Lawson’s early exit.

He said: “Let’s be fair to him, because he was up against it with no preparation in free practice three after a pneumatic problem on the power unit, so didn’t get any preparation and a couple of mistakes on his last lap meant that he was out in Q1.

“I’ve written here in my notebook: ‘Somewhere in Guadalajara, Mexico, a man called Sergio is laughing his head off.’

“I think that’s unfair, but you will consider that Sergio might feel today that he might have done better than P18.”

Breaking into laughter, Kravitz continued: “I think that’s unfair in many ways [as] Liam didn’t have any preparation.

“But you can only hope – for Lawson’s sake, I guess, and for Red Bull Racing’s designs on a Constructors Championship – that this is not a pattern that is going to be repeated with their other car apart from that driving genius Max Verstappen.

“[Red Bull won’t want the other car] to be going out in Q1 because that is not what they paid off Sergio Perez for a year ahead of his contract [expiration date].

“Liam does have the old [Red Bull RB21] nose, a different nose to Max Verstappen. That might be something to do with it.”

Red Bull in depth: More on Max Verstappen and Liam Lawson

👉 Max Verstappen news

👉 Liam Lawson news

Speaking after the session, Lawson revealed that he was around 0.5s up on his previous lap before he suffered “a big drop” and ran wide at the penultimate corner of his final effort.

It came after Helmut Marko, the Red Bull adviser, revealed that both Verstappen and Lawson have been struggling with overheating tyres in the last sector throughout the Australian GP weekend.

Lawson acknowledged that he “shouldn’t be going off” the track in qualifying regardless of his interrupted preparation.

He said: “We expected the start of quali to be tough, to be honest.

“The first laps, we expected to be off [the pace], and then we were just planning on building through the session, but obviously going off on that second lap put everything out of order a bit.

“Then the last lap was good, honestly, just until the last sector where I just had a big drop.

“Missing P3 obviously doesn’t help any of this, but I shouldn’t be going off in quali.

“Before Turn 9, we were about half a second up. Then, obviously, we would have kept improving, but I already had a snap through Turns 9 and 10.

“I think the tyres were already starting to drop there, so that’s something we’ve just been battling this weekend. Obviously it’s something that we missed practicing in FP3.

“We definitely overheated at the end of the lap, but I don’t… obviously it’s something we’ll look into it. Would it have helped doing FP3?

“I think today was a sort of quali prep day. Everybody was using soft tyres this morning. I think we had the car in a good window. Honestly, it wasn’t bad. And the lap we were on was perfectly fine.

“I just had a snap through the high speed. I think that overheated the tyres and then the last sector was basically gone from there.”

Read next: Max Verstappen’s ‘at one’ warning to rivals but no Australian GP ‘miracle’ expected