Formula 1: Why Red Bull Racing need to target Lando Norris for beyond 2020

Red Bull Racing’s driver situation is uncertain beyond the conclusion of the 2019 Formula 1 season. Here’s why they need to target McLaren rookie Lando Norris for beyond the 2020 season.

Beyond the conclusion of the 21-race 2019 Formula 1 season, the driver situation of Aston Martin Red Bull Racing is uncertain. In fact, one aspect of it is uncertain even as it pertains to the remaining 12 races of the 2019 season.

Max Verstappen signed a three-year contract extension with Red Bull Racing back in October of 2017 to continue driving for them through the 2020 season.

However, a statement made by team manager Helmut Marko earlier this year made it clear that there are clauses in this contract that the 21-year-old Dutchman could trigger to leave the team if he is not satisfied with their performance in their first season using Honda engines after terminating their 12-year partnership with Renault.

Without revealing specific details about it, Verstappen’s manager, Raymond Vermeulen, confirmed that this performance clause does, in fact, exist.

Meanwhile, Pierre Gasly has struggled ever since arriving to the team ahead of the 2019 season as the replacement for the Renault-bound Daniel Ricciardo, putting him on the hot seat that he has not been able to remove himself from with only three top six finishes in the season’s first nine races.

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To put it bluntly, Verstappen has blown Gasly out of the water. Verstappen hasn’t finished outside of the top five all season long and sits in third place in the driver standings with 126 points while Gasly has recorded one top five finish this season and sits in sixth in the standings with 43 points, 62 points behind Scuderia Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in fifth.

While Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner still believes in Gasly, the 23-year-old Frenchman is very much at risk of losing his ride with the Milton Keynes-based team after the 2019 season if he does not start improving. In fact, rumors have begun to swirl that he may even be replaced before the season ends.

With all things considered, there could potentially be two seats open at Red Bull Racing after the 2019 season, likely at least one. Who are the team’s best options to fill that seat or those seats?

Currently driving for Scuderia Toro Rosso, effectively the Red Bull Racing junior team, are Daniil Kvyat and rookie Alexander Albon, two drivers who it is challenging to see being promoted to Red Bull Racing in the near future.

Both have been cut from the Red Bull Racing organization in the past for different reasons, and neither one has been phenomenal this season to the point where they would be considered a huge upgrade from Gasly and could challenge Verstappen.

If Verstappen does leave, it would likely be to replace Valtteri Bottas at Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, which would in turn make Bottas a solid replacement candidate for Verstappen at Red Bull Racing. But they’d still have to worry about Gasly’s seat.

So what should Red Bull Racing do?

They need to focus on beyond 2020 at this point, and they need to target McLaren rookie Lando Norris.

Red Bull Racing tried to acquire Norris from McLaren last season and send him to Toro Rosso as the replacement for the struggling Brendon Hartley, but the Woking-based team blocked the move from taking place.

Additionally, McLaren confirmed last year that they had been approached Norris by several teams and that they would have been willing to effectively send him to another team on a temporary contract while keeping him under contract at McLaren, and he ended up being one of the primary candidates to sign with Toro Rosso for the 2019 season.

However, he ultimately ended up signing with McLaren once the team confirmed that they would not renew the contract of Stoffel Vandoorne.

Norris’s contract with McLaren is reportedly a “multi-year contract”, and that was confirmed recently when he signed a new deal with the team to continue driving for them through the 2022 season.

But as we know with the prospect of Verstappen leaving Red Bull Racing and given how Sebastian Vettel left the team following the 2014 season while he was under contract through the 2015 season, each driver’s contract contains certain clauses that can potentially be triggered to allow the driver out of his contract. Those clauses are typically not public knowledge, but they do tend to exist in most cases.

After McLaren blocked Norris’s potential move to Toro Rosso last season, it is hard to see them giving him up this easily, especially not after one season of a three-year contract extension. But what’s even harder to picture is that Red Bull Racing have given up on trying to lure the 19-year-old Briton away from McLaren at some point.

While McLaren have improved to the point where they are the clear “best of the rest” team behind Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull Racing, they are still nowhere near breaking into that group of three teams, and you have to imagine that Norris will be driving for one of these top three teams sooner rather than later anyway if McLaren don’t quickly break into this group, especially if they don’t make much more progress before 2022.

Norris has already recorded two sixth place finishes as the “best of the rest” driver and ahead of Gasly this season, including one in just his second career start in the Bahrain Grand Prix, and he sits in eighth in the driver standings as the second “best of the rest” driver behind teammate Carlos Sainz Jr., a former Toro Rosso driver himself. Additionally, his average starting position of 8.8 through the first nine races of the season is the sixth best among all drivers, and he sits ahead of Gasly (10.2) in that category as well.

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Given the fact that the potential range of Red Bull Racing’s driver situation for the 2020 Formula 1 season is literally from disastrous to phenomenal and their control over it appears to be minimal, they would be smart to target Lando Norris for beyond the 2020 season if they haven’t already.

After attempting to sign him last season but failing to do so, it would not be surprising if he is one of their main targets moving forward. It may seem like a long shot, even for the 2021 season or the 2022 season given his contract with McLaren, but it is well worth pursuing for the team at this point.

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