Shocking statistics from Red Bull young driver programme – From hero to zero in just four Formula One weekends, Liam Lawson who finished the career of Australian Daniel Ricciardo is facing a bleak future in motorsport’s top category. Having been surprisingly promoted ahead of Yuki Tsunoda to replace Sergio Perez at Red Bull Racing, the New Zealand born driver is facing a crisis of confidence.

The decision to demote Lawson back to the Racing Bulls after juts two outings in Red Bull colours was treated in some quarters of the paddock with outrage. Yet strangely a consensus has since developed that for a variety of reasons the Milton Keynes management made the right decision.

The Red Bull driver academy from where Lawson emerged is now under scrutiny in the F1 media, given it and Dr. Marko’s failure to find the next Sebastian Vettel or even Max Verstappen continues while other teams’ young driver programmes are delivering the future of F1 racing.

 

 

 

Verstappen NOT trained by Red Bull

By way of a note, Verstappen himself was not a product of Marko’s careful development as a junior. Having rocked the world with his dominant performances in the European F3 series driving for Van Amersfoot Racing he signed to the Red Bull junior programme in August of 2014 before making his full F1 debut for Toro Rosso just months later.

In fact the Red Bull driver academy has produced few F1 drivers over the past decade, with Yuki Tsunoda the last before Lawson to debut in F1 in 2020. Pierre Gasly was the previous candidate to be promoted from within Dr. Marko’s nursery in 2018 and before him it was Alexander Albon way back five year’s earlier.

The last truly successful F1 promotion from Red Bull’s junior programme was Daniel Ricciardo who debuted in F1 during the year Sebastian Vettel went on to claim the third his F1 world championships. When his team mate Mark Webber retired, the Aussie went up against the four times world champion as his Red Bull team mate and for many he was the reason why Vettel elected to switch teams the following year to Ferrari.

So Liam Lawson was in fact a rare breed when he was chosen as the next in line to emerge from the Milton Keynes driving academy, he substituted for Daniel Ricciardo in the junior Red Bull squad for five weekends following an injury the Australian suffered in Zandvoort. Whilst losing out in qualifying to the Japanese driver 4-1 in the autumn of 2023, in the Grand Prix they both completed Lawson finished ahead of Tsunoda in three of the four.

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Stats screamed Tsunoda should be promoted

When Red Bull finally decided their attempts to rehabilitate Daniel Ricciardo’s F1 career had failed following the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix, Liam Lawson was the one they brought in to replace him,. The six race weekend battle was now on between the two VCARB drivers, to impress Dr. Marko and Christian Horner who would be making the decision over who would succeed Sergio Perez alongside Verstappen in 2025.

Lawson impressed in the three Sprint events held over the closing six weekends of the year, beating Tsunoda twice but was 6-0 down in Grand Prix qualifying and only finished ahead of the Japanese pocket rocket in two of the six Grand Prix.

The statistics still scream that it should have been Tsunoda with his vastly greater experience in F1 who should move up to the Red Bull team, yet political circumstances clouded the judgement of those responsible for the decision, as Yuki’s key sponsor Honda had decided to end their relationship with the Red Bull Racing empire.

The pressure was on in Japan as Tsunoda made his big debut in a car that for the first time in his career has proven to be capable of winning F1 races. In the RB21 which everyone in Milton Keynes admits is on a knife edge most of the time, Tsunoda made it into Q2 and from a start in P15 finished the race in twelfth place.

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Lawson now struggling at RB

Yuki went one better next time out in Bahrain qualifying tenth on the grid but his race was compromised by the team’s shocking pit stop calamities, even so he made up one place from the start and more importantly claimed the first points of the season for the second RB21.

Tsunoda explained after the race in the desert that the Racing Bull car he’d left behind was in fact much easier to drive than the Red Bull. “The thing is, the VCARB has a much wider window in which the car operates,” he said. “It almost doesn’t matter what you do; this car can handle any kind of balance pretty well.”

And this was the reasoning Dr. Helmut Marko gave when Lawson was dropped to the second Red Bull owned team insisting strangely he was not being ‘demoted.’ “He’s not kicked out of F1 and Racing Bulls will give him the chance to recover and his career will start again,” Marko said. “For the benefit for him, he goes back to Racing Bulls, which has a car capable to be top 10 in qualifying and the race.”

Yet its not turning out that way for Liam Lawson, who did in his first qualifying session for the Racing Bulls team finish one place ahead of Tsunoda in Suzuka. Yet during the race the Racing Bull’s driver slipped back to P17 and blamed the team’s stray call saying: “We went really long and I guess tried something and it just didn’t really work.”

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Hadjar outperforming his teammate

A week later in Bahrain and Lawson was mired down in Q1 starting from P17 and the Grand Prix. He was defensive about his inability to make it into Q2 claiming “an issue with DRS” had cost him the transition forward. At face value this appears to be reasonable until we consider the comments of the team’s technical chief, Tim Goss. He revealed Lawson had triggered the closing of the DRS by lifting where he shouldn’t have, which is a driver error not a mechanical failing.

Part of the reasoning for Lawon’s return to the more benign Racing Bull car was to ease the pressure on him so he could find his lost mojo. Yet the frantic manner in which Liam went about the Bahrain Grand Prix suggests the is just not happening.

He was handed down penalties for contact with Lance Stroll and Nico Hulkenberg which he attempted to explain away saying: “I felt the only way I could overtake was having a launch from quite far back”. Prior to his demotion Lawson had defensively stated his junior career against Tsunoda had seen him the as thebetter driver.  Yet in the same car as Lawson, Yuki racked up P5 and P9 start in the opening two Grand Prix of the year before poor strategy decisions by the Racing Bull pit wall resulted in him finishing outside the points on both occasions.

The talk has already begun over Lawson’s inferior performance to his rookie team mate Isack Hadjar, who scored points in Japan and finished three places ahead in Bahrain. Whilst he yet has time on his side to recover some kind of composure to his race craft, it could be that Liam Lawson lays claim to another calamitous F1 first, by becoming the first driver to be sacked by two Formula One teams in a single season.

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F1 hopefuls threadbare in RB academy

Next in line from the Red Bull academy bull pen is another Japanese driver in Ayumu Iwasa, though his international junior formula racing saw his best effort of just P4 in the 2023 F2 championship. He currently is racing in Japanese super Formula where two podiums in the first two events for team Mugen see him lead the series many consider as closest to racing an F1 car. He would be the likely replacement should Lawson lose his Racing Bull’s drive as the next in line is in his first season in an International Racing Series.

This is Dr. Marko’s great hope of another Max Verstappen. Arvin Lindblad, who has been hyped by the 81 year old Austrian as F1’s ‘next big thing’ and has been catapulted from regional junior racing series into the FIA’s International F2 category this season. He currently sits 9th in the title race with a best of P5 across the three rounds held so far.

The Red Bull driver academy is clearly underperforming when compared to the likes of Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren and even Williams and Alpine. With the latter having produced the driver who may well be F1 champion this season – Oscar Piastri.

There are of course six F1 drivers on the 2025 grid who have graduated proper through the Red Bull junior programme, but given there are four seats available for the successful students of the programme, this is hardly a raging success.  Only Alex Albon Carlos Sainz and Pierre Gasly can be considered the real deal with Yuki Tsunoda now attempting to lay claim this year to be worthy. of a seat in something other than a Red Bull owned F1 team.

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F1 supremo to ditch controversial venue

The 2025 Formula One season is under way in a fashion we’ve not seen previously. The flyaway races are usually a slow burn at the start of each season with the momentum starting to build as the European season gets under way.

For the first time in F1 history, this year’s schedule has slated the first five Grand Prix to take place across just six weekends as the sport returned to Australia for the opening race which was swiftly followed by the rest of the Pacific rim events and two of the four middle eastern races will be complete come this weekend in Saudi Arabia.

Much unreported is the fact that Formula One has reacted to being forced to hold the opening two Grand Prix in 2024 on a Saturday. This was because Saudi Arabia demanded the change due to the Islamic Ramadan celebrations taking place in March that year. The timing of the Holy 29-30 days is calculated on the expected sighting of the new crescent moon in the Islamic calendar…. READ MORE