Red Bull are fielding their first Formula One car in twenty years without input from Adrian Newey, yet the signs are that the RB21 in Max Verstappen’s hands is an improvement on its predecessor. On day 1 the world champion looked quick on his first push lap although his time was only good enough to place him in third place behind Charles Leclerc and George Russell respectively.

Day 2 was given to Liam Lawson leaving the final day for his Dutch team mate, but the New Zealander’s running was hampered in the morning session. Like several of the teams Red Bull had not elected to bring wet weather tyres to Bahrain and as the rains came it meant Lawson was confined to the garage.

His RB21 was also hit with a loss of water pressure which hindered his progress further as the team had to remove the floor to rectify the problem with the car.

 

 

 

Lawson again almost a second slower

Come the afternoon things improved for Liam as he racked up a total of 91 laps for the day and finished 0.9 seconds off the pace of Carlos Sainz in his Williams who topped the time sheets ahead of his ex-team’s pair of drivers.

Lawson has completed just eleven Grand Prix weekends across the last two seasons for the Red Bull sister team then named AlphaTauri. His team mate Yuki Tsunoda won the qualifying battle in 2024 6-0 although in the races Liam’s pace was close to the Japanese driver.

Despite Tsunoda having far greater experience having completed four years with the Red Bull sister team, Christian Horner and Dr. Helmut Marko promoted Lawson to replace the retiring Sergio Perez which to many F1 observers was a surprise.

Whilst the Red Bull driver traded fastest laps with Lewis Hamilton in the morning session on day 2, following a crucial mistake the previous morning where he spun his car when the team had covered the car with flow visualisation paint. Red Bull will be upset with Lawson over this given it allows their competitors to grab a screen shot of how the airflow is working around the contours of their bodywork. Flow Vis runs are usually done at a slower and constant speed, yet the team’s new recruit appeared to be pushing hard.

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RB21 is oversteering

Ex-F1 driver and Sky expert commentator Karun Chandhok admits he is concerned for Liam Lawson, given the size of the task Red Bull have handed him to race alongside Max Verstappen. The world champion has seen off the likes of Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon early in the F1 careers and even the experienced Sergio Perez was left humiliated by the gap in performance to his team mate in his final year with the team.

According to Sky Italy Lawson “mimed” to his engineer that he was experiencing oversteer issues which is not a great sign of things to come, given not was this which Sergio Perez struggled with over the course of 2024.

Chandhok believes Lawson should have been given more time in the sister team before having to race alongside Verstappen and questions yet the wisdom of Red Bull not recruiting Carlos Sainz and letting the New Zealander earn his spurs properly alongside Yuki Tsunoda.

“I think he needs to be qualifying within two tenths of Max on average,” said the Sky F1 pundit. “But more importantly, when the points are paid, he needs to be there within one or two places of Max really. He wants to finish, ideally, one position behind Max, but if not, maybe two positions behind Max.”

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High bar set for the Kiwi

Sergio Perez came in eight places lower than Verstappen in last year’s title race and his qualifying deficit across the year was around 0.4 of a second at the start of 2024, but it slipped through the second half of the year to around 0.55 seconds. So asking Lawson to be within 0.2 seconds of Verstappen seems a big ask for the young Kiwi.

“It all depends on if Max is winning the championship,” adds Chandhok. “The expectation on Liam is going to be to finish second or third. If Max does win the championship, it means the car is good enough.”

Lawson finished the day in P7 with the same deficit to the driver topping the times, although today it was the Williams of Carlos Sainz who was quickest, yesterday was Charles Leclerc. Dr. Helmut Marko admitted Lawson had faced a set back with the rain and the faulty water pressure but his overall performance was as expected.

“We had a handicap today due to the rain and we were not able to complete our entire test programme,” Marko told assembled reporters. “Other than that, though, it was a normal day of testing and we ran different parts of the programme.

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Marko happy with Lawson’s efforts

“There was a leak in one of the coolers. That cost Liam at least 40 minutes of driving time. It would of course have been better if we didn’t have those problems, but we still did what we could. And this is still in line [with expectations].”

The next time Liam Lawson will drive the RB21 will be at the first. practice session of the season in Melbourne. With Red Bull not splitting day 2 and day 3 between its drivers, its difficult to know how close to Max the Kiwi will be. This of course may be by design to protect the young driver from early media criticism, but all eyes will be on him as he takes his place alongside one of the fiercest competitors F1 has ever seen.

There was a word of encouragement for the Red Bull team, whose car was at ties the fourth quickest in the end of season run in last year veteran pit lane expert Ted Kravitz. He believes the rule change over flexi wings coming at this year’s Spanish Grand Prix will play into Red Bull’s hands as the advantage exploited by McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari are taken away.

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Red Bull advantage with late FIA rule change

Verstappen won seven of the first ten races last year and he was leading the Australian Grand Prix when his brakes failed in spectacular fashion. Then came the development of McLaren first and then the others of their flex wings, which appeared to wrong foot the Red Bull team. By the time they had been given the green light by the FIA that the other wings were legal, Red Bull failed to develop their now version of the flexi wing which had the same impact on their car as it had on the others. 

Kravitz was asked to explain the upcoming rule change regarding the front wings and said: “Mercedes did it, McLaren did it, Ferrari did it. Red Bull, who are not strangers to aeroelasticity in recent Formula 1 times have said, ‘Well, hang on, we haven’t designed our car around that kind of concept’, and that’s why when they tried it, it didn’t really work with their car.

“But, this rule change might well play into Red Bull Racing’s hands very nicely if when we get to the Spanish Grand Prix and the new front wings that everybody is going to have to bring have less elasticity in it, we might see a different rung of the pecking order.”

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Hamilton contradicts his old boss Toto Wolff

Day two of Formula One pre-season testing and Lewis Hamilton has a bigger smile on his face. Having ended day 1 in thirteenth place a long way off the pace of his team mate, the former F1 champion looked at one with his Ferrari half way through the sessions in Bahrain.

Lewis was quickest in the morning session and ahead of his ex-Mercedes team mate by 0.4 seconds, though only Pierre Gasly and Oscar Piastri completed less mileage than Hamilton’s 45 laps. Meanwhile Carlos Sainz did a marathon 127 laps – which is more than the distance of  two Grand Prix at the Sakhir circuit – but Williams along with Haas were one the only teams prepared with wet weather tyres when the rain fell for an extended period during the afternoon.

Hamilton was clearly ‘on it’ late in his time own the SF-25 as he tussled the car around the track whilst others looked sedentary. Some reports have made much of the fact Lewis set his time which beat team mate Charles Leclerc when the conditions meant the track was slower, yet the Monegasque driver in fact had worse conditions in which to complete his mileage…. READ MORE