Two of Liam Lawson’s rivals on the grid have first-hand experience of getting the boot from Red Bull.
Alexander Albon, who spent a year and a half at the team before being replaced, said Red Bull’s decision to drop Lawson after just two rounds was “tough on Liam.”Lawson failed to score in either of his first two grands prix in a Red Bull. “He has had a tough few races, but it does take time,” said Albon, who spent a year as a reserve driver for the team after losing his seat at the end of 2020, then returned to race for Williams.
Albon believes more people appreciate the Red Bull has particularly unusual handling traits now compared to his difficult season alongside Max Verstappen five years ago.
While Lawson started just 11 races for Red Bull’s other team before his promotion at the beginning of the year, Albon had only done one more when he got his chance. However he found the handling characteristics of the cars produced by Red Bull’s two teams were extremely different.
“From my experience, it’s quite differently-balanced to the [Racing Bulls] car, more than other cars. So when the drivers change from [Racing Bulls] to Red Bull, one car’s quite front-limited and one’s quite rear-limited. So you get this bigger swing than even a Williams to a Red Bull or from a [Racing Bulls] to a Williams.”
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The Racing Bulls chassis proved competitive over the opening races. Yuki Tsunoda, who has taken Lawson’s place at Red Bull, qualified fifth for the season-opener at Melbourne. Albon believes Lawson could rebound quickly back at his former team.
“For Liam, he’s going back to a team that he knows, that he had great results with, a balance that I imagine he’s a bit more comfortable with in a car that he’s more used to.”
“What’s nice to see is Yuki is up for the challenge more than anything,” Albon added. “I think his attitude is the right attitude to have. I think he’s got to go into it believing he can do it.”
Like Lawson, Pierre Gasly returned to Red Bull’s second team when they dropped him in the middle of 2019 after just 12 starts. He raced alongside Tsunoda for three seasons and spoke to his former team mate after the news broke of his promotion to Red Bull.
“We spoke on the phone [about] obviously the way that I was also given this opportunity, just in terms of what didn’t quite work out and things that could have been different,” Gasly explained.
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Although Gasly believes Tsunoda is quick enough to perform well at Red Bull, he said that is no guarantee he will succeed there.
“So he’s got the speed, I think he’s got a strong character. Does it mean it’s going to be successful in Red Bull Racing? No. Can he be successful in Red Bull Racing? Yes. But it’s slightly more complicated than that.
“I just wish him the best. I’ve shared my thoughts and my experience from my time there. Time will tell, but I think he’s definitely a very strong driver. And in Formula 1 these days, you’ve got many strong drivers on the grid, so it’s not all down to your speed. There’s slightly more to it, but hopefully he can make the best out of this opportunity.”
Gasly said Tsunoda has clearly matured since his first season in F1 four years ago when he showed speed but also was involved in a few collisions and often sounded agitated on his radio. “He always had the raw speed,” said Gasly. “It was a little bit too hectic behind the wheel at times and on the radio.
“I think in that sense he’s matured enough in minimising the mistakes. It’s a fine line between pushing right at the limit or over-pushing slightly too much, which can be quite costly in Formula 1. I think [he’s] tuned that. Looking at the past few seasons, I think he’s been putting in very strong performances.”
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Esploratore (@esploratore1)
3rd April 2025, 13:26
Interesting to see that comment by albon on lawson likely going back to performing well after demotion; albon knows that better than most other drivers, since he did himself.
He also improved towards the end of 2020, but it was too little too late, as a team owner I couldn’t have trusted him to perform decently going into next season, since he did worse early 2020 than he did late 2019.
Jere (@jerejj)
3rd April 2025, 16:44
Spot-on. The fact he performed worse for most of the 2020 season than over the nine 2019 GPs he did at Red Bull Racing shows they were right to drop him instead of riskily trusting his improved late-2020 performance level would carry over into the following season only for him to start performing inconsistently again.
Ideals (@ideals)
3rd April 2025, 14:18
This new narrative is interesting to read, for sure, but for all the wrong reasons.
First off, neither Gasly nor Albon drove the current ground effect Red Bull, so grabbing onto the current car as some kind of example that their car was so difficult to drive seems a bit funny to me. Also, the current problems seem more related to Newey leaving than anything else, the current team simply doesn’t understand the concept as well as Newey did and are struggling to develop that car. Before that it was a monster of a car.
Gasly and Albon were given a Newey car with a pretty decent Honda engine, if you can’t succeed in one of those, you have only your own talent to blame. Lawson should have been given more of a shot to succeed, so he has both that excuse and the “it’s not a Newey car anymore” excuse going for him, but Gasly and Albon really don’t get to lift along on that. Gasly had half a year to succeed and couldn’t cut it, Albon had a whole extra year over that and also couldn’t cut it. They weren’t ready to step up to the plate. And that is including that nobody had the expectation they’d match Max. They only had to match those around Red Bull to some extend. They didn’t do that, they dropped to midfield and below. That’s on them, regardless of any other excuse, regardless of Max’ performance.
Jere (@jerejj)
3rd April 2025, 16:42
@ideals I couldn’t agree more with you.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
3rd April 2025, 18:55
Gasly and Albon were not given winning cars, and no #2 driver @ RBR has a chance if the car is not ‘winning’. Period.
This is why they didn’t want to give Yuki the drive. Because he’s not a mule driver, unlike the last few #2 drivers who do what they are told. They also didn’t have to give Yuki the drive because HRC are not really relevant at Red Bull anymore. (Unless they managed to get money from HRC, and now they have a scape goat that isn’t Liam).
Is the car hard to drive : probably not. At least not when you are getting the lion-share when it comes to setup support, and you are not being used to test tires in the middle of a race. Imagine complaining about the front end when your car isn’t really setup well, yeah, you would, easily. You would have massive issues pointing the car in the right direction.
Red Bull have issues w/ their #2 drivers, at least going back to Webber. So really, only a fool would judge Red Bull having anything to do with the performance of their #2 driver. The test for consistency @ RBR is always true, if the #2 can get a podium, its because the #1 is a sure thing.
Sham (@sham)
3rd April 2025, 14:30
I would dearly love to see Lawson finish ahead of Tsunoda this weekend.
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
3rd April 2025, 23:50
One of the things that I’ve learned, both from Newey’s writing, and from observation over the years, is that fast F1 cars, particularly Newey designed ones, have always been extremely difficult to drive. The flip side being that they are generally extremely fast if the driver can master them.
I suspect that this year, RBR have a car that retains a lot of Newey based design, but no longer have his input to iron out anything that’s not quite right in terms of design or set up. That no doubt is presenting some huge challenges, even for Max.
It’s quite likely that things will get worse before they improve, possibly even not until 2026, as I can’t see RBR investing a large portion of their limited budget for this years car with big changes for next season.
The same will apply for nearly every team. What you have now is what you’re stuck with, so any driver, other than Max is probably going to struggle with their current car.