Lawson wasn't Quick Enough for Red Bull—F1 Data Analysis

When I heard that Red Bull Racing had dropped F1 driver Liam Lawson after just 2 weekends, I was shocked but not surprised. Lawson had been performing absolutely terribly, but that’s an awfully small sample size.

Christian Horner is not the type of man to let a small sample size get in the way of some cutthroat decision making, but he also gave a lot of leeway to Perez, in my opinion. This made me very curious and eager for a look at some more detailed and contextualized data. Was Lawson really that bad that he deserved to lose his seat so quickly, or has Red Bull just run out of patience because McLaren’s 1-2 punch of Norris and Piastri is costing them millions of dollars in prize money?

I think the answer is a little bit of both, but let’s look at the data (using my R package 'formula1data').

Qualifying Pace Analysis

In his 2 races with Red Bull, Lawson’s Q1 lap times are 101.1% of Verstappen’s on average (and I have to use Q1 because Lawson has failed to advance past it).

If we take that 101.1% benchmark and apply it to past seasons where drivers made their debut for Red Bull Racing, it becomes clear just how bad it was. In 2019, Pierre Gasly started the season as Verstappen’s teammate before being replaced by Alex Albon for the 13th race of the season. Even though neither achieved long-term success with Red Bull, they were almost never slower than that average performance by Lawson.

With Perez in 2020, what we see is similar. I think these charts also show that we can't necessarily count on gaps to go away with more seat time.

In terms of qualifying pace relative to Verstappen, Lawson seems to be a step down from other drivers that were ultimately inadequate for Red Bull in the past. Meanwhile, Lawson’s replacement, Yuki Tsunoda, has been outstanding in qualifying for sister team RB. He has qualified in the top 10 for both Grands Prix so far.

Bottom Line: Lack of Confidence in Liam’s Ability to Score Points

In Formula 1, drivers only score points in a race for themselves and their team if they finish in the top 10. Since points are what ultimately makes the big bucks for teams, Lawson’s poor qualifying form could be forgiven if he was using stellar early-race racecraft and car management to claw his way into the points. It doesn’t make things easier for Lawson, and frankly, he didn’t meet the challenge.

With Gasly and Perez, Red Bull often found itself wishing it had a better rear gunner for Verstappen, but crucially, both were able to score points within their first 2 races for Red Bull (unlike Lawson):

No pace. No points. It’s awfully hard to blame Red Bull for not having faith in him right now.

Conclusions

Red Bull made the right call. 2 races was truly all it took for it to became brutally obvious that they need to try something else for both the team’s sake and Liam’s. His lap times are not even remotely close to the acceptable ballpark.

Even as I’ve rooted for Lawson to get his proper F1 and Red Bull chance, I’ve had questions about his killer instinct for a while. 2nd in DTM and 2nd in Super Formula is not the greatest look. And I think if he undeniably had that killer instinct, he would have found a way to put in some acceptable lap times sometime over the course of 2 weekends in Red Bull ’s car.

Given how limited testing is these days, I imagine it must be quite difficult to step into a new team as a young driver and be expected to score immediately. But this is no excuse, Kimi Antonelli is having no problems scoring points so far.

I hope Yuki does well. He will be under tremendous pressure. I think Red Bull making the switch so early reflects that they may have some willingness to try out Hadjar or even Lawson again if things go south (even though Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko has insisted that Tsunoda will finish out the season).

What do you think about this decision by Red Bull? Let me know in the comments or on Blue Sky.