Among a week full of rumours (which I personally dismissed as completely ridiculous), Oracle Red Bull Racing has announced that their Hastings-born driver Liam Lawson will be leaving the senior Red Bull team. After severely underperforming in the first two races of the season, Lawson is to trade places with Yuki Tsunoda and complete the remainder of the F1 season in the sister team, Visa Cash App Racing Bulls. It’s hard to think of this as anything but a brutal and unfair demotion, but this could be one of the most interesting experiments in Formula 1 history.  

When Lawson was given the big seat for 2025, many fans were outraged saying that Tsunoda surely deserved it more. The second Red Bull seat appears to be cursed in a Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher-esque fashion. Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Sergio Perez and now Liam Lawson have all been run through the Red Bull slaughterhouse in their attempts to wrangle the car designed for Max Verstappen. Alex Albon has shared that driving the Red Bull is like using a computer with the mouse on maximum sensitivity. It’s no wonder nobody but four-time world champion Max Verstappen has been able to drive it well.  

However, it is utterly unheard of to have replaced a driver after only two races, and incredibly difficult races at that. Melbourne was practically a swimming event and the recent Chinese Grand Prix saw drivers across the grid struggling to get their heads around the new track surface. Lawson had also never driven these tracks before, even in ideal conditions. At least rumours swirling around Jack Doohan’s potential replacement give him five races to prove himself, not just two.  

I can’t help but ask what on earth is going on behind the scenes at Red Bull. Sure, at the end of the day, money talks and Formula 1 is a business but only two races is an incredibly short amount of time to decide that Lawson isn’t worth saving. The upcoming Japanese Grand Prix is one of Lawson’s most experienced tracks and could have been the redemption that he was looking for. However, the Japanese Grand Prix is also the home race of both Tsunoda and Red Bull’s engine provider, Honda. Allegedly, Honda has offered Red Bull Racing a decent (eight-figure) sum of money to have Tsunoda on their driver line-up.  

So… predictions? My guess is that at the Japanese Grand Prix, Lawson will out qualify Tsunoda. The VCARB02 has been performing exceptionally strong so far and as we’ve seen with Lawson, The RB21 has been almost impossible to wrangle if your name isn’t Max Verstappen.  

I hope for Tsunoda’s sake that he can get a handle on the car, but I equally believe that this swap will show once and for all, it’s not the drivers that are the problem at Red Bull, it’s the insanely specific demands of the car, and the ruthless management style.  

If Yuki Tsunoda doesn’t perform well and Lawson suddenly finds his form again, maybe Red Bull will need to readjust their strategy of tailoring the car to only one driver. Otherwise, I don’t see Red bull having a shot at the Constructors Championship anytime soon.