The 2025 Formula 1 season is not even two rounds old and already Red Bull is facing the same questions it pondered for the majority of last season.
It has a peaky car that only Max Verstappen can master, while new team-mate Liam Lawson is already feeling the weight of expectation that comes with being a Red Bull driver.
So, how does Red Bull resolve the situation? Our writers offer their views.
Lawson needs time and support – Oleg Karpov
It was almost all so predictable. Promoting Liam Lawson to a senior team after just 11 races in F1 would almost inevitably mean he'd struggle, given what the job comes with: an exceptionally good team-mate, the trickiest car to drive, and an unforgiving environment.
Lawson is very good under pressure, and his responses to the media suggest he's still got the right approach. Not making excuses and not panicking is exactly what he needs right now. But even Sergio Perez, with a decade of F1 experience under his belt, couldn't prevent a complete mental breakdown in the end.
But to replace him now would repeat the same mistake. Red Bull is famous for trusting young talent - but also for burning it too rapidly.
Why not try a different approach and back the new kid in the same way that Toto Wolff did with Andrea Kimi Antonelli? Supporting Lawson through this difficult period may be the only right answer.
It seems that Red Bull made a mistake by overlooking Yuki Tsunoda. It wasn't a fully justified move - but the decision has been made. It's time to stick to it.
Lawson's admission that he "needs time", but that he doesn't feel he has that time, is a worrying sign. He's under enough pressure as it is, and the Red Bull bosses will have to do everything they can to take it away from him. Yes, F1 is a performance-driven business, but performance also comes from individuals who are put in circumstances where they can excel.
And promoting Tsunoda mid-season would put pressure on him as well. To drive a new, tricky car without a pre-season test, to be under the spotlight of 'OK, you wanted this car, now show us what you can do', would just be wrong. It risks burning him too.
Lawson needs more time. But more than time, he needs support.
“Change your effing car” – Stuart Codling
The misattribution of a certain popular quote to Albert Einstein renders it no less accurate: “The definition of insanity is repeating an unsuccessful course of action again and again in the hope of obtaining a different result.”
This is just one quote that springs to mind – more later – as Red Bull seems set on shooting the pianist yet again.
Liam Lawson’s troubled Chinese Grand Prix weekend, in the wake of a similarly ghastly few days in Melbourne, has led to the inevitable speculation about when he will be fired or demoted to Racing Bulls – with Yuki Tsunoda, over whom he was initially preferred, heading to the benighted garage next door to Max Verstappen.
Red Bull has form in this department, having burned through juniors aplenty. Daniil Kvyat, Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon passed through in such quick succession that Dr Helmut Marko’s famous young-driver programme found itself with a shortfall. Experience was the proposed solution, and Sergio Perez duly met his Waterloo – yet still the pipeline was stuttering, hence Lawson becoming perhaps not Mr Right, but Mr You’ll Do For Now.
At the risk of stating the obvious, perhaps the problem is not the person in the driving seat so much as the fast-but-hideously-peaky confection of expensive alloys and carbon fibre that surrounds them.
It may be an expensive route to take. And, since the mission statement of the RB21 was to trade off some peak performance in order to make the peak easier to reach, perhaps the team doesn’t know how to get there.
Rather than carry on repeating a failed course of action, the time has come to try something different. In Christian Horner’s own words (to Toto Wolff, in a team principals’ conference captured in Drive to Survive Season 5): “You’ve got a problem – change your fucking car.”
You’ve made your bed, now lie in it – Mark Mann-Bryans
To somewhat torture an idiom, Red Bull has made its car, now they have to find someone to drive in it.
The issue is, there is no one else other than Max Verstappen who can wrangle the best out of a machine that is no longer the pick of the field or the envy of the pitlane.
The RB21, like several iterations before it, has been designed from its very core to deliver for Verstappen – and Verstappen only.
Now Red Bull has to own that fact. Rules stipulate each team must have two cars and two drivers, otherwise Christian Horner would probably save time and money by running Verstappen as a solo operation.
The team will churn through promising rookie after promising rookie (and Sergio Perez) in its quest to find anyone who can hold a candle to Verstappen – a tough enough challenge when all things are equal, let alone when they are so weighted in favour of a four-time world champion.
Last season Verstappen claimed the latest of his quartet of drivers’ crowns while Perez floundered and ultimately sank in the choppy Red Bull waters. Liam Lawson looks as though he already needs a rubber ring to stay afloat, but it is not his issue alone, as replacing him with Yuki Tsunoda, Isack Hadjar or Arvid Lindblad would see the same situation unfold.
So just accept that all of the eggs are in the Verstappen basket instead of asking other drivers to play chicken with their F1 careers by being pitted against one of the most formidable car/driver pairings in the history of the series.
