Liam Lawson will take on one of the toughest jobs in Formula 1 in 2025 when he partners Max Verstappen at Red Bull.
The 22-year-old is Verstappen’s fifth teammate at the top team, and he will be vying to ensure that he doesn’t end up obscured like the rest of them.
Sure Alex Albon and Pierre Gasly have gone on to have successful careers at other teams on the grid, but it was all while watching the guy they went up against in the same car win four titles in a row.
In their periods at Red Bull, Verstappen outclassed both in qualifying and the races. Gasly didn’t even manage to last a full season before Red Bull felt it was time for a swap, having only outqualified him once in 12 attempts.
Albon didn’t fare any better, having only finished ahead in eight races and getting out-qualified on all of the 24 occasions they competed at Red Bull. Verstappen’s penitentiary had taken another prisoner.
The out-qualified stat is key to why Albon found it so tough against Verstappen and is something he discussed recently on the High-Performance podcast.
Alex Albon highlights ‘sharp’ car trait that should warn Liam Lawson
One of the things that characterises Verstappen’s success in F1 has been his ability to develop a driving style that is difficult for others to replicate. Most drivers prepare a stable car that is predictable when turning into corners, whereas Verstappen likes a ‘pointy’ front end that is really sharp through the corners.
This means he can aggressively turn into a corner and still catch the rear of the car if he induces any rotation, a tricky task for some drivers. Albon was often seen spinning his Red Bull in an attempt to replicate the style, which was a result of chasing what he branded as an ‘eye-wateringly sharp’ trait.
“I like a car that has a good front end, so quite sharp, quite direct. Max does, too, but his level of sharp and direct is a whole different level. It’s eye-wateringly sharp,” said Albon.
“To give people an explanation of what that might feel like, I don’t know if you guys play computer games at all, but if you bump up the sensitivity completely to the max, and you move that mouse, and it’s just darting across the screen everywhere, that’s how it feels. It becomes so sharp that it makes you a little bit tense.”
Albon described how Verstappen would want his car to be sharper and sharper as the season went on, leading to him needing to take more risks in a bid to catch up to the Dutchman. This would lead to a ‘snowball’ effect, whereby Albon was too tense to extract any extra performance during a lap.
Gasly made a similar mistake by focusing on perfecting one corner, instead of trying to come up with an all-round setup that suited his driving style. Perez would also go on to admit at the end of 2023 that he was ‘lost’ after he went down too many setup rabbit holes, which was an approach he changed for 2024 before the RB20 threw up its problems.
Lawson must not allow himself to fall into the same ‘snowball’ trap, and potentially he has already demonstrated traits that will prevent such a thing from happening.
Liam Lawson must learn from previous Red Bull driver mistakes to stand a chance against Max Verstappen
It is the fifth time Red Bull has promoted a driver with less than 30 starts to their main team. Helmut Marko and Christian Horner’s preferred method of ‘sink or swim’ has worked for Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel, so why shouldn’t it work for Lawson?
Horner justified Lawson’s promotion over Yuki Tsunoda – who has an extra 70 starts under his belt – by saying his stints at Visa CashApp RB have shown he is “not afraid to mix it with the best and come out on top.”
Tsunoda’s potential promotion was met with angst between Horner and Marko, who were both indifferent over his talents. Tsunoda has beaten Nyck De Vries, Daniel Ricciardo, and out-qualified Lawson in all six races they were together. Where Lawson showed more character to go up against Verstappen was in his battles on track, namely up against Fernando Alonso in Austin.
Lawson irked Alonso with his overly defensive move in the Sprint race, with the Spaniard vowing to get ‘payback’ later in the weekend. Except Alonso’s ‘payback’ on Lawson ended up being pointless, as he blocked the RB driver during a qualifying in-lap rather than on any timed effort or preparation lap.
Alonso is one of F1’s heavyweights and his criticism of Lawson appeared unjustified (if not somewhat entitled), while the 22-year-old focuses on the job at hand. It demonstrated mental resilience, which is perhaps the trait a lot of drivers have been missing when going directly up against Verstappen in the same team up to now.
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