Red Bull avoided another catastrophic decision, but concerns persist

In one way, Liam Lawson being dropped from Red Bull to sister team Racing Bulls after only the first two races of 2025 Formula 1 season was very much a surprise. But on the other hand, it also was not much of a surprise at all.

Red Bull have always been rather ruthless with their drivers. Time and time again, drivers have come under pressure and been sacked earlier than expected, and often times, before they've had a fair chance of really finding their feet.

To name just a few, Pierre Gasly was demoted after nine races at the big team, Nyck de Vries was dropped from the organization altogether after just 10 races, and now Lawson has been demoted after just two.

Many would agree that Yuki Tsunoda, who has been promoted to Red Bull to replace Lawson for the rest of 2025, should have been in that seat from the start of the season, given his four years of experience at RB, and his gradual progression each year. Those same people would also agree that Tsunoda is not the solution to the ultimate problem.

The decision to promote Tsunoda did, however, steer Red Bull clear of another decision that would have been disastrous.

Ever since Daniel Ricciardo left the team for Renault at the end of 2018, Red Bull have been struggling mightily to find an adequate replacement in that second seat. In fact, in the six years and two races since, they've now had five drivers signed to that seat; Gasly, Alex Albon, Sergio Perez, Lawson, and now Tsunoda.

The issue is that, given how hard the Red Bull cars of the last few generations and rulesets have been to drive, they've largely hired drivers who are not qualified, fit, or ready to drive a car of that difficulty. Lawson only had 11 races of Formula 1 experience across two seasons before being given just two more races to figure out that car. Albon only had twelve, and Gasly only had 26.

Perez was the only one of these drivers who was able to make it work at points with Red Bull. That's largely because he stuck around a lot longer, but he also had 10 years of F1 experience before jumping to the team. With that, he had more knowledge in how to set up a car, how to manage a race weekend, and how to handle the pressure when things got tough, before it all ultimately got the better of him in 2024.

Red Bull's lack of belief in Tsunoda has been well documented over the last few years, with the team seemingly making every excuse in the book, including his so-called wrong "mentality," to not promote him. That even caused the rumor mill to suggest that Isack Hadjar could replace Lawson for the Japanese Grand Prix, and the rest of 2025, before last week's reversal decision.

If you want to talk about a real step backwards, that would have been it for Red Bull. In the process of dropping a struggling driver who has just 13 races of experience, you'd be promoting a driver with just two races of experience to drive in his place.

Sure, Hadjar has been pretty solid through his first two Grand Prix weekends, minus his silly error on the formation lap in Australia that Helmut Marko labelled as "embarrassing", and has shown that he has the speed and potential. But much like Tsunoda was in his 2021 rookie campaign, he is very prone to outbursts over the radio, and he will need time to hone himself in, limit his mistakes, and refine his abilities.

Throwing him into the Red Bull right now likely would have destroyed his confidence, and maybe even his career, and with that, it would have been an even worse situation performance-wise for Red Bull than what they had with Lawson.

Given how obsolete and misused Red Bull's junior program has become, this decision also allowed it to regain its purpose, with two young and inexperienced drivers now in the fold at Racing Bulls.

But Tsunoda's promotion clearly shows that Red Bull may have learned from their past mistakes with their premature promotions of previous drivers. After seemingly taking a step backward by promoting an inexperienced driver in Lawson over him, they've now gone in favor of experience, which has proven, to an extent, to work out better for them several times in the past.

Given how many drivers, regardless of their talent and experience, have been chewed up and spit back out by Red Bull's tricky car and their unforgiving environment, only time will tell if Tsunoda will finally be the team's solution, or just another casualty.