The shortlist for the seat, once it was clear a change would be made, came down to the two Visa Cash App RB drivers, Yuki Tsunoda or Liam Lawson. But Red Bull have opted to promote Lawson despite him only having made 11 grand prix starts over two stints, replacing Daniel Ricciardo in each.

Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson in Visa Cash App RB F1 Team uniform. — Liam was teammates with Yuki for just 11 races. Credit: Red Bull Content Pool / Getty Images.

Christian Horner, Red Bull’s team principal, made it clear following the announcement that even with significantly less grand prix experience, they felt that Liam’s performances showed that he had a higher performance ceiling.

“Liam’s performances over the course of his two stints with Visa Cash App Racing Bulls have demonstrated that he’s not only capable of delivering strong results but that he’s also a real racer, not afraid to mix it with the best and come out on top”, he said in a statement today.

But Horner also spoke to other factors around the decision to promote Lawson over Tsunoda, citing his “real mental resilience and toughness” as critical reasons, but also his superior race pace over Tsunoda despite similar qualifying performance.

“With Liam, when you look and go into the analytics of his race, pace was slightly better in the races that he did. His qualifying pace was very tight with Yuki, and you’ve got to assume that the potential with Liam having only done 11 grand prix, is he’s only going to get better and stronger. He’s shown real mental resilience and toughness.

“A couple of things have stood out with me with Liam – how versatile he is, you put him into a situation, he gets on with it. If you remember his debut in Zandvoort after Daniel broke his fingers, he was racing against Max on his out lap.”

So does this reasoning ring true when looking at the data?

Race & Qualifying Pace

Their qualifying head to head over the 11 races where Tsunoda and Lawson were teammates (2023-24) shows Tsunoda as finishing ahead 10 out of the 11 times when the highest shared qualifying session is considered, or 11/11 times overall – with an average delta between them of 0.454s (considering lap times from the highest session both drivers reached). The smallest deltas did come in the latter part of the 2024 season: Mexico City GP qualifying saw just 0.033s separate the drivers with Tsunoda ahead, in Qatar there was just 0.047s between the drivers with Tsunoda ahead, and in Abu Dhabi 0.053s again with Tsunoda ahead.

The picture from qualifying alone indicates that Tsunoda had not only superior pace but also superior positions, frequently going through to the next qualifying session where Lawson did not.

Tsunoda versus Lawson Qualifying times compared in a table.

Race pace is another matter however, as Horner highlighted, pointing to an advantage for Lawson over Tsunoda with 6 finishes ahead of his teammate for Liam. However, it has to be pointed out that three of these resulted from DNFs for Tsunoda. Comparing the deltas between the drivers by the chequered flag shows an average gap of 13.907s between Tsunoda and Lawson on track.

A “gritty racer mentality”?

What Horner refers to as Lawson’s ‘versatility’ or “gritty racer mentality” is perhaps arising from recoveries of lower qualifying positions to finish closer to his teammate, like in Austin this year where he drove from 19th on the grid to a 9th place, points finish recovering from a grid drop penalty. These drives also coincided with instances where Tsunoda either lost positions or finished outside the points.

Race positions gained and lost compared between Lawson and Tsunoda in a table.

But aside from this and his debut in Zandvoort in 2023, his race performances could be branded as underwhelming given he lost positions from the grid to the chequered flag in all but one of his 2024 entries.

Comparing this to Tsunoda is where Lawson’s performances appear more favourable – on average, Tsunoda qualified in P10.2 and finished in P11.71, losing an average of 4.7 places on his grid slot by the chequered flag. Lawson, on the other hand, had an average qualifying position of 12.9 but finished in 12.44th losing an average of 0.3 places per race.

Race and qualifying averages compared between Lawson and Tsunoda.

Considering this comparison, Horner’s reference to ‘gritty racing’ by Liam becomes more understandable and it also has to be remembered that these performances were in midfield, or occasionally back-marker, cars. Liam also had the ability to keep out of trouble on track, putting his feuds with Alonso or even Perez aside – he suffered just one DNF to Tsunoda’s two (plus one DNS). Consistency in qualifying and race results, and an ability to race while keeping clean, is what Red Bull will be wanting after Perez’s pattern of qualifying poorly yet putting in recovery drives to often decent positions.

Ultimately, Horner’s comment of a higher performance “potential” and the assumption that Liam is “only going to get better and stronger” is exactly that – an assumption. There’s no telling how he will perform in the 2025 Red Bull car or alongside Verstappen, a seat that’s claimed the careers of a few skilled drivers.

Can you handle the pressure?

The pressure that comes with being the teammate of a now four-time world champion cannot be understated, particularly when that champion is Max Verstappen who has an ability to extract performance from a car that is lacking, as has been seen this past season.

Horner cited Lawson’s ability to deal with pressure as another reason for their picking him over Tsunoda, saying to talkSport that “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.”

Max Verstappen and Liam Lawson laugh in the Red Bull Racing garage in Barcelona. — Lawson will be Verstappen’s teammate from 2025. Credit: Red Bull Content Pool / Getty Images.

But often this pressure comes from within the team structure itself, with Horner or Helmut Marko expecting performance from the offset and consistently. It could be argued that it was this that impacted Perez’s trajectory with the team, alongside the constant and inevitable comparison with Verstappen. Horner implied that Red Bull have learned from this in how they will approach Lawson’s stint with the team:

“I think the key thing is not to put too much pressure on him and not to put too much pressure on himself that he’s going out against the best driver of his generation. And I think that he just needs to almost ignore the data of what’s going on on Car 1 and just focus with his own engineering team, what he’s doing, and just do the best job that he can and he’ll be fine. And hopefully we can support him in that.”

There’s little data that can show a driver’s preparation to go up against Verstappen, but we have seen what happens if they are not prepared and cannot deal with it – look to Gasly or Albon’s stints in the seat – which is the risk Red Bull are taking in promoting Lawson so early in his career. Red Bull clearly value Lawson and view him as a driver for the future, making this move all the more risky, as it will either triumph and pay off or crumble.

Yuki Tsunoda looks at the Red Bull Racing RB20 car after his post-season test in Abu Dhabi. — Tsunoda’s first chance at a drive in a contemporary Red Bull car came just after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Credit: Red Bull Content Pool / Getty Images.

Red Bull had clear, yet perhaps unfounded, concerns over Tsunoda’s ability to stick it out at the top team in terms of his conduct within the car. But there has been obvious development in this area from Yuki this year, both over the radio and out of the car too, something he and Horner each spoke to following his post-season test of the RB20.

In a similar fashion to offering Ricciardo a ‘lifeline’ as a brand ambassador or bearing him in mind for drives should they arise when they ended his contract earlier this year, which Ricciardo himself is thought to have rejected, Horner is keen to reiterate that Red Bull haven’t ruled out Yuki for the future.

“It’s just that 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”, he said.

Speaking to The Race, Horner described Tsunoda as the “bridesmaid” yet again, and indicated that if there’s no opportunity for Yuki at Red Bull then they have to question, “does it make sense [to keep him]?”.

“You can’t have a driver in the support team for five years. You can’t always be the bridesmaid.

“You’ve either got to let them go at that point or look at something different.”

Things change quickly in Formula 1, and even more so at Red Bull, so ruling out an opportunity for Tsunoda at the top team in the future would be foolish, but whether Tsunoda will accept this distant promise of a chance of a promotion after four seasons in the sister team is another matter.