Liam Lawson has broken his silence on the prospect of a Formula 1 debut with Nyck de Vries at risk of losing his seat.
The Dutchman was recruited by the Red Bull stable to race for their sister team AlphaTauri this year after an eye-catching debut as a stand-in for Alex Albon at Williams last year. But, in a permanent race seat, he has so far failed to impress.
De Vries is yet to score a point in five races with the team, while Yuki Tsunoda has been in points contention in every outing. Red Bull's Helmut Marko has already declared the Formula E champion is on a "yellow card" and is said to have given the racer just three more races to save his F1 career.
If the trigger is pulled, despite the presence of Daniel Ricciardo as a Red Bull reserve, Lawson is the man who the team will likely turn to. He has never raced in F1 before but is the most senior of the team's swathe of junior drivers and has been going great guns in Super Formula so far this year.
He won on his debut in Japan and repeated the feat on Sunday to move to the top of the championship standings. Naturally, after his most recent outing, the New Zealander was quizzed on the prospect of being called in mid-season for a surprise F1 debut.
But Lawson was coy in his response and refused to be drawn too much on the suggestion. "[The win] is good timing in the sense it puts me in the lead of the championship, and that's what I am thinking about at the moment," he told Autosport.
"I want to finish the year and fight for the championship, and that will give me the best opportunity for next year. In terms of what's happening [in F1]... it's completely outside of my control. I am just happy to win today."
Meanwhile, Damon Hill noted that Red Bull are no strangers to making driver changes mid-season and gave his view on Marko's no-nonsense management style. "He's a tough teacher, isn't he? He's a tough kind of master for drivers and he always has been," said the 1996 world champion.
"I don't know where it comes from. He was obviously very hard on himself as a racing driver, and some people believe that that is the way to get the best out of racing drivers. If you did that to Max, he responded and he delivered, so there is an argument to say, 'Well, the tough will survive and the weak will have to be discarded'.
"But, the turnover at Red Bull, this is a fairly typical routine, isn't it? They take the driver halfway through the season, and they go, 'Right, you're out, someone else is in'.
"And they get a chance to find out how the other driver copes, so they actually turn over quite a few drivers that way and get to find out what they're really like, and how else?"
