Why Red Bull’s driver swap isn’t just about Lawson’s failure – but Tsunoda’s excellence

Is it fair to Liam Lawson to drop him after just two races into the season? No, it’s probably not. After all, you can’t help but feel he hasn’t been given a chance to learn and even try to improve. At least giving him a race at Suzuka, a track he knows and likes, would’ve been more understandable. Just one last chance.

Is it harsh? It is. No doubt about that. No need to elaborate.

But equally, is it fair for the other thousand-plus employees of Red Bull to keep someone who’s not just underperforming, but wasting their work?

On Sunday evening in Shanghai, Christian Horner talked about data. He said there are 400 engineers working hard to make the car quicker – and there are 600 sensors monitoring its performance. And if all of them point to one cause for underperformance, there’s nowhere to hide. And if all agree there’s no reason to expect a sudden change, isn’t it the duty of team leaders to act?

Horner and Helmut Marko would be the last to admit it was a mistake to promote Lawson. It was their idea to bring the New Zealander into the main squad, after all.

It would be foolish to think that they enjoy torturing another driver. It would be silly to imagine they enjoy watching the world laugh and cry at their inability to solve the problem of the second driver. It would be naive to point out that the car is tailored from nose to tail to Max Verstappen as a primary problem and advise them to solve that first before blaming the poor souls tasked with taming such a capricious machine.

They know that better than anyone. But they also know Verstappen brought them four consecutive titles, and he’s their only hope of delivering another one this year. And if they want that to happen, they have no choice but to act. Trying to be fair or not too harsh isn’t on the agenda. It’s not just Lawson who didn’t have time to make it work – it’s them too.

The Lawson and Tsunoda swap goes far beyond the performance levels of the two drivers

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

If they’d seen a single straw of hope for Lawson to perform drastically better at Suzuka or elsewhere, they’d probably wait at least a few more weeks. If they’ve decided to drop him now, it means they don’t hear a single RB21 sensor crying out for them to wait.

But it’s not only Lawson’s data they must have studied. It must have also been Tsunoda’s strong start to the year – and more importantly, his reaction to what happened over the winter – that played a massive role in them considering a swap.

The decision last December to leave him in Faenza was harsh too. It also wasn’t fair.

Tsunoda had consecutively beaten Nyck de Vries, Daniel Ricciardo, and then Lawson. He could be forgiven for feeling disrespected and unjustly demoralised after outperforming all of his recent team-mates. It wouldn’t have been surprising if he lost all motivation, desperately trying to find an answer to the inevitable question: what more could he possibly have done to deserve that Red Bull seat?

He swallowed it. He went back and worked on himself instead of choosing to blame an unfair world. And he came back stronger.

When we sat down in Racing Bulls’ hospitality in Bahrain, on the evening after the second day of testing, he knew all the right answers. He didn’t show any sign of bitterness, he didn’t sound ungrateful. Instead, he talked about how motivated he is to help and lead his Racing Bulls squad. Yet he didn’t try to hide that he still wants that Red Bull seat.

It wasn’t more than half a joke back then when we offered him to imagine Helmut Marko appearing as Morpheus from The Matrix, holding two pills in his palm: blue – symbolising another Racing Bulls contract, and red – a chance to join Red Bull, knowing it might end very quickly.

“The red one,” he laughed without a second thought. Back then – hard to believe it was less than a month ago – even imagining that Tsunoda would have that choice seemed nearly impossible.

Tsunoda has outperformed all his most recent team-mates at the Red Bull sister squad but was still overlooked

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

On Friday morning in Shanghai, Laurent Mekies gave Motorsport.com a great insight into how Tsunoda dealt with what he must have felt was an injustice.

“When he came back to Europe, honestly, we saw straight away that he was in super strong spirits,” said the Frenchman. “Already in the opening weeks of work in Faenza, in the simulator, he was in very, very strong spirits straight away. High motivation, very focused, down to the details, hard willingness to work even harder than what he was doing. And then we went to the Bahrain test, and after those three days, we looked at each other and we said, ‘We have another Yuki’. That’s what we said to each other internally.

“We saw he’s doing stuff that he was not doing last year – in terms of what he was reporting from the car, in terms of what he was doing in the car, and in terms of how much more of a leadership role he was taking in the team. And we said it to each other, and also to him.”

When the recording stopped and we continued to chat about “another Yuki”, Mekies had nothing more to add than what he’d already said on record: Tsunoda responded in the best possible way his boss could’ve hoped for.

After all, he’s been here before. When Pierre Gasly was freed from his Red Bull contract shackles and moved to Alpine, it wasn’t Tsunoda whom Marko and then-team boss Franz Tost proclaimed as the new team leader in Faenza. It was Red Bull’s new Dutchman, de Vries – an F1 rookie, but a driver with experience in other categories. Even before the 2023 season started, there was plenty of talk that Red Bull could end up with an all-Dutch line-up. That didn’t last long: Tsunoda effectively ended de Vries’ F1 career by outqualifying and outscoring him across 10 races.

Yet once again, Tsunoda wasn’t seen as Red Bull’s next hope – that role went to the returning Ricciardo. The Japanese driver remained just a benchmark to assess the Australian’s form.

He swallowed it back then too. And worked on himself to become stronger.

Rather than sulk over unfair treatment, Tsunoda improved himself over the winter to be ‘another Yuki’

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

When Ricciardo failed his mission, and Sergio Perez’s performances opened the floodgates of speculation about his potential dismissal, Tsunoda still wasn’t considered a real candidate – despite beating the Australian in their intra-team battle. He was re-signed for RB, but once again labelled too weak to be considered for the Red Bull seat. And when Ricciardo failed post-summer break too, the general conclusion was that it was him, the Australian, who was no longer the same – not that Tsunoda was now ready to step up.

Then Lawson came on the scene and managed to get close to Tsunoda – and it didn’t take long before he became the favourite to replace Perez.

Every single time, Tsunoda had every reason to be frustrated and angry – and every single time, he responded by stepping up again. Perhaps there’s never been another driver in Faenza team history who’s been under such prolonged polishing as Yuki.

His speed was never in doubt. But he crashed too much. He was inconsistent. Too emotional. Not mentally strong enough. Loud on the radio. You name it all.

He worked on all of it – and maybe that final snub last winter left him no other option but to eliminate his remaining weaknesses. Who knows – maybe it was just the final part of Marko’s masterplan to turn Tsunoda into the ultimate warrior. Or maybe just a blessing in disguise. If he still wanted to have a future in F1 – let alone keep dreaming about a Red Bull seat – that was the last push he needed.

His 2025 campaign is really strong. He should have more than the three points he earned in the Shanghai sprint. He should have finished sixth, if not higher, in Melbourne after outqualifying both Ferrari drivers and running in the top 10 for most of the race. He should’ve scored more in Shanghai, if not for a poor strategy call and a broken front wing.

What comes next, though, is the job so often described as the toughest in F1. To even be respectably close to Verstappen in a car built entirely around him is an immense task – one Tsunoda probably can’t yet imagine.

Matching Verstappen in a car developed to his preferences is Tsunoda’s next major challenge

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

“The car is faster,” he laughed on Saturday when teased by journalists in the media pen about possibly driving a Red Bull at Suzuka, before Racing Bulls’ PR rep dragged him away.

It may be faster, indeed. But it must be driven the way only Verstappen knows how.

It’s absolutely unrealistic to expect Tsunoda to do much better than Lawson did. After all, they were almost a match for each other last year, and Horner and Marko concluded Lawson was more suited to the task. It will require Tsunoda not only to use all the hard lessons learned in Faenza, but to dig deeper and work even harder. He’ll need to improve his consistency and eliminate errors – even tiny ones like his Q3 mistake in Shanghai, when he slid off the track on his last flying lap.

The circumstances aren’t ideal either, with Tsunoda facing the task of jumping into the RB21 without any pre-season testing – and straight into a grand prix in front of his home crowd, which will inevitably add pressure. Ralf Schumacher might be right: in Tsunoda’s current position, there’s more risk than potential reward in such a move. But the difference between Morpheus and Marko is that the Austrian usually comes with just one pill – and he’s ready to thrust it down a driver’s throat before they even open their mouth to whisper an answer.

Even if Tsunoda wanted to say no to the Red Bull opportunity now, that’s not an option. He’s got to make it work. But it’s not only Tsunoda who needs to work harder and apply lessons learned. Red Bull does too.

If the team really wants it to work, a change in approach is required. Relying on someone who’s supposed to be “tough” hasn’t worked. Lawson’s resilience wasn’t enough to survive the Red Bull environment – so perhaps the environment itself needs to change. Because otherwise, there’s no one left to choose from.

Tsunoda is almost the last hope.

Will this driver swap cause a change in approach from Marko and Horner?

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Maybe it’s time to stop piling on the pressure just to see if the driver cracks – because not everyone is a Verstappen. If they want this to work, they’ll need to protect that new driver from the crushing weight of expectation before burning through yet another one. Maybe it’ll even require Horner to unequivocally confirm that Tsunoda’s seat is safe at least until the end of the year. Maybe the team’s PR department could try and stop spreading the narrative that it’s Honda’s money – not Tsunoda’s performance – that tipped the scales in his favour. That might show the team has learned something from the Perez era, too.

Because if it doesn’t work with Tsunoda, there are still too many races left this year to risk ruining Isack Hadjar’s or even Arvid Lindblad’s careers too.

And for Lawson… it’s probably fair to say he can learn from all this as well – including from his former team-mate. Because there’s arguably nothing better for him to do now than to swallow it, go work on himself, and come back stronger.