After months of speculation and ‘will-they-won’t-they’ uncertainty, Red Bull has ripped the band-aid off and made a huge change for F1 2025.

After four years of keeping the faith with Sergio Perez through his up-and-down form, Red Bull will start afresh with Liam Lawson as Max Verstappen’s teammate – and the question on everyone’s mind is whether it’s too much, too soon, for the young Kiwi.

Liam Lawson gets the nod for Red Bull

Lawson’s rise hasn’t been meteoric through the junior ranks – he first signed on with the Red Bull junior programme in 2018.

But, in the years since, Lawson has been a fast learner and has been competitive at everything he’s jumped behind the wheel of – whether that be winning the Toyota Racing Series in New Zealand, finishing fifth in his second season of Formula 3, or third in his second season of Formula 2.

Finishing second overall in the 2021 DTM championship and the 2023 Super Formula Championship, Lawson finally did enough to get a chance in F1 when Daniel Ricciardo injured himself in a crash at the Dutch Grand Prix – a fateful moment that resulted in Ricciardo eventually losing his seat outright to the Red Bull reserve.

With only 11 races completed, Lawson won out in the head-to-head between himself and Yuki Tsunoda for the Red Bull seat alongside Max Verstappen. He beats, by one race, Alex Albon’s ascendancy into a Red Bull seat, with the British-Thai driver having completed 12 races at the time he got the nod to replace the struggling Pierre Gasly.

Albon is now held up as one of the examples of that quick-fire urgency from Red Bull backfiring on a driver and team. Albon, aside from a handful of outings, struggled to keep the pace alongside Verstappen and, eventually, this disparity resulted in Red Bull opting to replace him.

So why, five years later, have Red Bull opted to take Lawson and put him in a seat that no one, since Daniel Ricciardo six years ago, has managed to thrive in? After all, the Milton Keynes-based squad did appear to have the perfect immediate replacement ready to go in the form of a much-improved Yuki Tsunoda. So why was the Japanese driver overlooked again?

Why Red Bull plumped for Liam Lawson and not Yuki Tsunoda

During their six races together at VCARB this season, Lawson proved once again that he had the ability to jump in without little preparation and handle the pressure – his first race, at the United States Grand Prix, saw him carve his way forward from the very back (due to an engine penalty) and claim ninth place.

This came a day after he finished five seconds behind Tsunoda in the Sprint – his first race outing in close to a year – while he showed no signs of being cowed in any way by him incurring the wrath of Fernando Alonso during that weekend.

Lawson giving it as good as he got carried on into the next weekend, in Mexico, where things went less smoothly as he and Perez went wheel-to-wheel in a battle both knew mattered more than usual. Lawson showed his anger by flashing the middle finger at Perez, but made amends by holding his hands up and waiting around to speak with Christian Horner afterward – a meeting in which he duly got his knuckles rapped.

Tsunoda would eclipse Lawson in the tricky conditions in Sao Paolo, coming home in seventh, but Lawson was just eight seconds behind at the chequered flag, finishing in ninth place. They were to be Lawson’s final points of the year, while Tsunoda would go on to score another ninth place in Las Vegas.

While Tsunoda did still have an edge over Lawson in their six races together, the difference wasn’t night and day – at least, not in the races. Expanding the comparison to include the five races from 2023, Tsunoda scored, in total, eight points to Lawson’s six.

In races where both finished, Tsunoda was ahead in five – Lawson in four, while the Kiwi led Tsunoda on track for around 25 percent of the circa 450 laps they each completed.

In single-lap pace, however, Tsunoda very much had the edge as he outqualified Lawson 10-1.

But those 11 races have allowed Red Bull to gather plenty of data on the duo and, as it stands, the belief is that Lawson’s potential is greater than Tsunoda’s. Just 11 races in, Lawson’s performance isn’t far off that of a driver with four years of experience and an awful lot of time and effort from Franz Tost, Peter Bayer, Laurent Mekies, Helmut Marko, and Christian Horner.

Lawson has coped well with sub-optimal conditions and a lack of preparedness on two separate occasions. So what can he do with an off-season of proper preparation?

There’s also the fact that there are still question marks over Tsunoda’s temperament and self-control. Fiesty to the point of amusing as his radio rants threatened his career in 2021, he has managed to calm down that side of his behaviour – but it isn’t gone completely.

Earlier this season, in Bahrain, Tsunoda didn’t handle a team instruction to cede position to Ricciardo – who was on a contra-strategy on soft tyres near race end – particularly well, choosing to use his car in a threatening way as he floored it past Ricciardo on the cooldown lap.

With Ricciardo making it clear he was unimpressed by Tsunoda’s antics, it was an early insight into the Japanese driver’s mentality even at this developed stage in his career. While Tsunoda unquestionably does have pace and skill behind the wheel, mental maturity and the ability to handle pressure counts for a lot.

“At this juncture in time, we believe that Liam has got the right characteristics, the right strength of character to deal with the pressure that comes with being Max Verstappen’s teammate,” is how Horner phrased it in an interview with talkSport following Lawson’s announcement.

Just last week, Marko – while needlessly bringing up Tsunoda’s nationality as being relevant to his state of mind – commented on Tsunoda being “undisciplined” – this lack of self-discipline was evident in 2021/’22 when Tsunoda revealed far too much about his motivation as he explained his hatred of physical training and how he’d rather play computer games, leading to an intervention by former AlphaTauri team boss Franz Tost to move him to Faenza for closer supervision.

Contrast this to the benchmark and standards Verstappen brings to Red Bull, and it’s clear why Lawson – whose temperament and discipline is far closer to the Dutch driver’s – is the one to have earned the place… for now.

The huge challenge facing Liam Lawson

Of course, having earned the nod to step into the Red Bull, Lawson must now dig deep and actually produce the goods.

To that end, he simply had to keep his head down and play a diligent waiting game. Expecting to go into Red Bull and immediately match and beat Verstappen is a fool’s errand at this point – while Lewis Hamilton may have managed to spring a surprise for Alonso in 2007, F1 was in a very different place when it came to testing rules and the sheer amount of preparation incoming drivers could achieve before their first Grand Prix.

Lawson is expected to play rear gunner, and provide a more capable supporting role for Verstappen’s title defence while bringing home far more points than Perez managed.

A calm, mature head will win out in this regard, particularly if Lawson can do what George Russell did in 2022 and simply be patient – there simply is no need to try immediately showing up the established Champion straight away.

His willingness to get scrappy in the midfield has already made him a standout towards the end of 2024, and the mental resilience he’s shown up until now will be a requirement as he lines up alongside Verstappen in a few months’ time. Red Bull has a lot of belief in his self-confidence and self-belief, and the Kiwi spoke about this confidence in an exclusive interview with PlanetF1.com.

“I think it’s something that you’re either born with or you’re not, maybe,” he said.

“I mean, I feel fortunate that I was born with it, and I’ve always had that belief.

“I think whether you’re fighting in the midfield or at the front of the field, to be perfectly honest, it’s actually no different… the performance, as a driver, we try to achieve in a race weekend is the best possible performance that we can do.

“In a qualifying session, it’s the best possible lap that you can do. Whether you’re in a top team or a midfield team, you can only put that car so far up the grid.

“But, as long as you finish that lap and you feel like you’ve done the best when you finish the weekend and you feel like you’ve done the best job that you can, then your result is going to be what it’s going to be.

“So I think in a top car, the approach is the same. You’re trying to do and execute the best job you can. The only thing that changes is the spot that you’re in.”

If Lawson is able to put that approach into practice against Verstappen, he will fare well. Adopt the mentality that he only needs to beat everyone who isn’t named Max Verstappen, and he will likely thrive.

If he struggles to handle the near-certain beating he will take from Verstappen if he tries to beat him at the first time of asking, then that mental toughness may quickly ebb away.

Swallowing pride is the most difficult thing a driver can do, and there are not many young and hungry drivers capable of doing so. Clearly, Red Bull don’t believe Tsunoda – who is more likely to look out for number one given a lack of clarity over his future – can swallow that pride in a way Lawson is more likely to do at this point.

But, if Lawson can’t do so and starts to struggle in Perez-esque fashion, Tsunoda is keeping a watching brief, ready to jump in should Lawson fail – the Japanese driver only narrowly lost out to Lawson on this occasion but is at the head of the queue if Lawson emulates the struggles Albon and Gasly went through.

Of course, it also must be pointed out that while Lawson is facing a huge challenge in F1 2025, he can take some comfort in the fact there’s someone else on the grid facing even more scrutiny. While Lawson merely has to be better than Perez – a task which seems straightforward at this point – Kimi Antonelli steps up into Formula 1 from F2 as Lewis Hamilton’s successor at Mercedes.

The young Italian steps into the limelight of Formula 1 as a teammate to George Russell, and faces a huge learning curve as well. His first audition – his practice session at Monza – ended in the barriers having got overly excited about the pace he had, and keeping that excitement reined in will be the main challenge he faces.

For Lawson, his quest to remain calm will be imperative if he is to succeed Verstappen as the face of Red Bull’s F1 efforts – the Dutch driver has long made it clear he’s in F1 for a good time, not a long one. Should the F1 2026 regulations fail to impress him, there’s every chance Verstappen could end up walking away before the end of his contract with Red Bull – which runs to the end of 2028.

Keeping calm will be most of the battle, and the rest will be in taming the RB21. This year’s car was a recalcitrant beast, even for Verstappen, and Perez struggled to adapt to its foibles. Lawson now has to get to grips with a car Verstappen is well used to but, as is quickly become the norm for the 22-year-old, he isn’t preparing any excuses.

“In terms of driving styles, I don’t really know if I believe in it so much in terms of a driving style,” he told PlanetF1.com, when asked about the overlap in styles between himself and Verstappen.

“I think you have certain things you like a car to do but I think also, for me, I spent a lot of time developing that car as well, as a junior and as a reserve for the last couple of years, and I feel like I understand quite well the way the car drives.

“But I also don’t fully believe in ‘This doesn’t suit your driving style’.

“I think as drivers, we’re professionals, we have to adapt to whatever we’re driving.”

Red Bull’s senior figures are known for their ‘no-bullshit’ approach to their racing, with Verstappen’s direct bluntness fitting in well with that. Lawson is already showing signs that he’s cut from the same cloth, with a hardened edge that contradicts his youth.

The path forward is clear, and the pieces are in motion for Lawson to become a superstar in F1 in the not-too-distant future. Should he fail, Tsunoda is ready and waiting while, behind him, Isack Hadjar and Arvid Lindblad look set to be the next junior stars to step up the ladder.

The next 12 months will define Lawson’s entire career – will he sink or swim?