It is a bang with an announcement and possibly not the last: Formula 1 racing team Red Bull Racing pulls the ripcord and will restore Liam Lawson to the B team after just two races. However, the risky game only begins from the front, because the problems of the New Zealander will also catch up with its successor Yuki Tsunoda.
Not even 100 days after his introduction as a new Red Bull driver, the time of Liam Lawson has expired in the dominant Formula 1 team of recent years. The New Zealand will be his cockpit according to information from RTL/NTV and sport.de and lose other media with immediate effect. This is not yet official, but the statements that were made around the Grand Prix of China do not allow any other conclusion.
Lawson should be happy about it. His reputation suffered heavily after only two races in the RB21. The pressure left traces. “He has shrunk to a Bonsai format of a Formula 1 driver,” judges sport.de-Kolumnist Felix Görner about the battered 23-year-old, who “fell terribly on the nose”, as the RTL expert expresses.
Danner: “There will always be a Verstappen car”
The big question is: How could Red Bull be so wrong in Lawson? Nobody had expected that he would drive at eye level with Max Verstappen. That goes without saying that Lawson has now walked the red lantern several times, Christian Horner, Helmut Marko and Co. had not calculated.
“This is simply intolerable,” not only finds RTL expert Christian Danner, in whose eyes Lawson is only partially responsible for his own results. He says: Red Bull and Max Verstappen also take responsibility because they put the second pilot into a position in which he can almost fail.
“On the one hand, the car moves in one side: the car has to do this and that. On the other hand, every other driver has so far pulled in the other direction. You won’t find the golden middle ground.
Red Bull aligns Formula 1 car fully on Verstappen
Görner also sees the proverbial dog buried here. “If you don’t get along with Max Verstappen’s vehicle mood, you have no chance,” he explains.
As is well known, a stable front with which it can steer quickly and hard. With a slightly exaggerated rear, it is in its comfort zone. This is exactly how Red Bull builds his Formula 1 car. And that is exactly what numerous drivers have been doure in the past. Either you can cope with this tendency of the car, or you get a problem. Just like Lawson.
Lawson-Aus deserves: “Formula 1 is a performance society”
“He joins in a number of talented drivers that are crushed by the mighty class of Verstappen like a lemon. The drivers break. And Lawson is now rushing faster than a crystal on the Max Verstappen class,” explains Görner, who considers the driver change to be the right decision.
“The expulsion is deserved. Formula 1 is a performance society. You have to be in a certain area straight away, otherwise you no longer have any right to exist,” he says.
The time in his eyes is also the right one: “Because it gives you way to get points in the designer World Cup. And because Verstappen needs a wingman. And the last one does not have a wingman, but a broken man who sits in a Formula 1 car.” The distance between the two drivers is “too clear”, a new beginning without alternative.
Tsunoda “will have difficulties”
For Red Bull, however, the new beginning is also associated with a risk. Nobody knows how Yuki Tsunoda will hit “Super Max” next to “Super Max”. Nobody knows how the Japanese can handle the RB21. “The racing bulls car is easier to drive than ours,” said Verstappen in Shanghai and took Lawson a bit.
The basic problem remains independent of the new driver: Verstappen is too good, the RB21 is not good enough. A Zwickmühle that Tsunoda must first master. “Whether he is with it [dem Aufstieg zu Red Bull Racing, Anm.d.Red.] It is a completely different question, because I am sure that Tsunoda will have the same difficulties as Lawson and also like Sergio Pérez in the past year, “the exchange for Danner does not become a sure -fire success.
Görner also believes that. “Now the nail sample comes: What does it mean to go to such a team in addition to Max Verstappen? You only have the chance if you land just behind. These are usually one to three tenths.” However, the distance between the Dutch and his new Wingman should not be much greater, according to the RTL expert.
If Tsunoda also fails on this requirement, the team may face the same problem in a few weeks. Only then they would not have anyone for another new beginning in the hindquarters.