Hindsight really is 20/20.
After Liam Lawson's "messy affair" in Formula 1 preseason testing at Bahrain International Circuit, he had an even more disastrous season-opening Australian Grand Prix weekend at Albert Park Circuit.
He failed to make it out of Q1 and then crashed during the race, while teammate and four-time reigning world champion Max Verstappen qualified third and finished second by less than a second behind the dominant McLaren of Lando Norris.
Nobody with any knowledge of Formula 1 would have anticipated that Lawson would come in and match, or even come close to matching, Verstappen. But he failed to even come close to meeting the far less ambitious expectations of simply putting together a quiet weekend.
Skip ahead to the sprint qualifying session at Shanghai International Circuit, and Lawson qualified last, while Verstappen took second place.
As Sky Sports' Karun Chandhok pointed out during the broadcast at the Sky Pad, Lawson looked very apprehensive on the race track. And no matter how fast your car is, the margins across the grid are such that an anxious approach will not cut it, even against the sport's backmarker teams.
Given Red Bull's history, there have already been rumors surrounding Lawson's future, because at this rate, they simply cannot afford to have their second driver performing at such a low level, and with very little upside.
While their future decisions are what really count, one cannot help but wonder if their decision to replace Sergio Perez was premature.
During the 2024 season, Perez signed a multi-year contract extension to remain with Red Bull through the 2026 season. But his performance in the second half of the season resulted in him being dropped in favor of Lawson.
What many questioned at the time was why Red Bull went with Lawson as opposed to the more experienced Yuki Tsunoda, who has competed for the team now known as Racing Bulls since 2021.
But perhaps the better question is why they needed to replace Perez in the first place.
Yes, it's a strange question to ask now, given how eager everybody was at the time to see someone else in Perez's seat. Perez's performance down the stretch in 2024 certainly left a lot to be desired.
But was that more down to the drop-off in team performance than it was driver performance?
In 2023, when Red Bull had the fastest car in Formula 1, Perez finished in second place in the driver standings behind Verstappen. Yet even though Verstappen more than doubled his point total, not much was made of the record-breaking deficit, since he still finished P2.
But with a car that clearly lost more than just a step after the first few rounds of the 2024 season, Perez could only manage eighth place in the standings, while Verstappen managed to win a fourth straight world championship.
Even when Checo finished P2 in 2023, when Red Bull had the fastest car, he finished with less than half the points Max had. But he finished P2, so all was good.
— Beyond the Flag (@Beyond_The_Flag) March 21, 2025
His P8 in 2024 was not a performance fall-off as much as it was a team fall-off.
Now Red Bull are stuck.
Red Bull only managed to finish in third place in the constructor standings because of Verstappen consistently getting the absolute maximum out of the car.
During the back half of the season, the Milton Keynes-based team were probably the fourth fastest team behind McLaren, Ferrari, and Mercedes, and Verstappen became the first driver since 1983 to win a title for a team not inside the top two in the constructor standings.
So was Perez's performance really that terrible, given what he had to work with?
In the season's first five races, of which Verstappen won four, Perez racked up four podium finishes. Beyond that, when Red Bull's decline became evident, he did not finish on the podium, yet he only had three actual Grand Prix finishes outside of the points.
It's not ideal, especially when you add in the five retirements. But suffice it to say that Red Bull would happily take P8 with the way things are going for Lawson right now.
Even with his struggles, Perez finished with more than twice the number of points as Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso in P9. Lawson, on the other hand, can't even beat the backmarkers.
Red Bull had a September 2024 deadline to determine Lawson's future, as he would have been free to sign elsewhere had his plans not been secured by the team. So there was a bit of a rush on the team's side to make a decision, and that probably didn't play to their advantage.
And let's not forget that Lawson actually replaced Daniel Ricciardo at Racing Bulls (then known as RB) before the 2024 season ended, which was the de facto part one of securing his future.
It's quite hard to imagine Ricciardo wouldn't be performing a lot better in the second Red Bull seat than Lawson has thus far.
But Red Bull went with Lawson over Tsunoda and the two veterans, and now they appear to be stuck.