Liam Lawson’s early season demotion from Red Bull Racing back to Racing Bulls has had pundits wondering if the seat alongside Max Verstappen is poisoned somehow.

But Peter Bayer, CEO of VCARB, doesn’t buy it.

Max Verstappen’s teammate not ‘poisoned,’ says Bayer

In nine years at Red Bull Racing, reigning champion Max Verstappen has faced down six different teammates — Daniel Ricciardo, Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Sergio Perez, Liam Lawson, Yuki Tsunoda — and bested them all.

But it hasn’t merely been a matter of besting them; Verstappen has proven time and again that he’s a generational talent, one who can make the most of extremely difficult cars that might confound his fellow drivers.

From Alex Albon pointing out Verstappen’s preference for extreme sensitivity in his racing machines to Yuki Tsunoda pointing out the RB21’s narrow operating window, Verstappen simply knows better than anyone how to control the competition.

That has led to suggestions that, perhaps, Red Bull’s second seat is cursed. Poisoned. And no one would be better suited to have a perspective on that than the man in charge of the team whose talent pool Red Bull pulls from.

More on Red Bull’s driver swaps:

👉 All the mid-season driver swaps Red Bull have made in their F1 history

👉 Red Bull’s seven shortest driver stints – and why they ended

In a conversation with RacingNews365, Racing Bulls CEO Peter Bayer admitted of the second Red Bull drive, “I’m not so sure I agree it is a poisoned seat, to be honest.

“I look at Checo a couple of years ago, and he was a vice-world champion.

“Helmut [Marko] and Christian [Horner] are probably way more qualified to answer this, but you have the talent of a century, somebody so focused. I don’t know of any driver so focused on racing, driving, like Max.

“It’s all he does. He wakes up and he’s thinking about racing. He goes to bed and he’s thinking about racing… or he’s not going to bed and he’s sim racing.

“He’s been trained his whole life to be ready for this challenge, and, obviously, with the success, the mental strength is coming.

“So I don’t think you can speak about a poisoned seat. It’s just that the cars are so pointy nowadays that either you manage to drive the car, or you don’t.

“And I think that will be the challenge for Yuki, and I think he can drive that car.”

It has indeed been a challenge for Tsunoda, who has been open about his struggles in finding the operating window for the notoriously tetchy RB21, and who has just one points-paying finish in three races as a result.

It’s less a problem with the seat itself, Bayer argues, and more a matter of Verstappen’s generational talent.

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