Red Bull's Liam Lawson-Yuki Tsunoda swap: Key questions around brutal F1 driver seat switch set for Japanese GP

We ask some of the key questions around the news that Red Bull are set to swap Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda ahead of next week’s Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka…

Why swap now?

Red Bull have not yet commented on what is understood, and now widely reported, to be their impending switch of drivers after just two races of the new season ahead of next week’s third round in Japan.

But whatever the ultimate reasons behind the swift reversal of Lawson’s winter promotion from junior team Racing Bulls, it is hard to describe the move as anything but brutal as far as the 23-year-old New Zealander is concerned.

That said, there is also certainly no escaping the fact either that Lawson’s two race weekend appearances in one of the 2025 grid’s four fastest cars were disastrous. Surprisingly disastrous.

Qualifying results of 18th, 20th and 20th – the worst sequence for a Red Bull driver in the team’s 20-year history – were respectively followed by race results of retirement (crash) in the Australian GP, 14th in the China Sprint and then 12th in the Chinese GP itself in which three drivers ahead of Lawson in the original classification were disqualified.

In sharp contrast, world champion Max Verstappen did not qualify outside the grid’s top two rows at either event and recorded finishes of second, third and fourth in the same RB21 car.

Those results mean Verstappen is just eight points adrift of early pacesetter Lando Norris in the Drivers’ Championship, but Lawson’s failure to score means third-placed Red Bull are already 42 behind McLaren in the constructors’ title chase – the standings which determine teams’ end-of-season prize money.

What is clear from the evidence of Lawson’s results alone from the season’s first two weekends is that he struggled badly in a car that Verstappen was able to make far more out of. He himself admitted that his pace was “just not good enough” after he qualified last for the second day running in Shanghai.

Sky Sports News’ Craig Slater reported: “This will be cruel, but to an extent might taking him out of the firing line be of longer-term benefit?

“He has struggled far more than anticipated to get to grips with this car. I’ve spoken to people with a window on how Lawson’s been over the first two grand prix weekends. ‘Frazzled’, ‘at a loss’ and ‘too much too soon’ are the kind of phrases they’ve used.

“Results, albeit from a small sample, are way adrift of any that team have posted before; a 19th and two 20ths in qualifying is not Red Bull form.”

Why has Lawson not been given more time?

One of the key questions that will inevitably be asked of Red Bull team principal Christian Horner when he faces the media at Suzuka. Did Lawson not warrant more time to turn the situation around and build confidence in what even Verstappen has admitted is a challenging car?

From Pierre Gasly to Alex Albon, Red Bull have a history of making ruthless mid-season driver switches but Lawson’s demotion so early in the campaign is something altogether different in terms of how soon it has happened.

Although Lawson clarified on Sunday that his post-qualifying remark in China of “I don’t really have time” to turn the situation around actually referenced the fact the season was under way and races were coming thick and fast, it ultimately proved accurate in the more literal sense.

Added to the fact he had arrived at the senior Red Bull team with just 11 grands prix starts at the junior outfit to his name, Lawson had never driven at either of the first two venues on this year’s calendar, Albert Park and the Shanghai International Circuit.

Ironically, he has got past experience at Suzuka thanks to his season of racing in Japan’s Super Formula in 2023, and his appearance in that year’s grand prix for AlphaTauri when he finished 11th, one place ahead of Tsunoda.

The next track after that is Bahrain, where Lawson first tested the RB21 in pre-season.

Why was Lawson promoted over Tsunoda in the first place?

It was just before Christmas – December 19 – that Red Bull confirmed Lawson as Verstappen’s new team-mate.

As much as it had become increasingly clear in the final weeks of last year that Red Bull had finally decided to move the struggling Sergio Perez on, and would come to an agreement with him to do so despite the presence of a two-year contract, it was also quite clear-cut that it would be Lawson rather than the more-experienced Tsunoda who would get the call-up to replace him.

But while there was certainly nothing new in the senior Red Bull team turning to the junior team for a new driver – Lawson was the seventh over the past 16 years to earn an internal promotion – the decision to call up the New Zealander over Tsunoda did stir external debate

Lawson first raced in F1 during the 2023 season when he substituted for Daniel Ricciardo at AlphaTauri, now called Racing Bulls, after the Australian broke a bone in his hand.

Lawson was largely impressive during his 2023 cameo, scoring points in Singapore and also twice finishing just one position outside the points in 11th.

He fully replaced Ricciardo a year later for the last six events of 2024 but was outqualified 4-2 by Tsunoda, who also scored more points. Nevertheless, Lawson was keen to get his elbows out and it was understood that Red Bull bosses felt he had the strength of character needed to be the team-mate to Verstappen, whose relentless speed and results present the ultimate yardstick.

Lawson’s relatively small early gaps to the more-experienced Tsunoda also pointed to the promise of there being more to come once he built up his experience levels.

Why Tsunoda now but not three months ago?

In other words, if Tsunoda is the right driver to make the step up now why wasn’t he when Lawson was promoted to the seat in the first place? Is the U-turn purely down to Lawson’s struggles? Or has Tsunoda’s impressive form at the start of this season combined to change perceptions among Red Bull management about his suitability for the role?

The argument against the latter is surely that Tsunoda had already raced 87 times across four seasons for Racing Bulls at the time of the original decision not to promote him back in December, so it is hard to see what could have intrinsically changed in assessments of the 24-year-old’s capabilities in the space of three months and two more races.

Yes, Tsunoda has started the new campaign particularly impressively with three top-10 qualifying results and strong race performances too in a Racing Bulls car that is going surprisingly well, while Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko has suggested in recent weeks that “Yuki is a different Yuki from the years before”.

He still retains his links to Honda though, a long-standing relationship which was thought to have potentially counted against Tsunoda given the Japanese manufacturer are switching their F1 engine allegiances to Aston Martin after this season.

So have the reservations that Red Bull must have had about giving Tsunoda the seat in the first place, despite his greater experience compared to Lawson, suddenly gone away? Or have they been left with little choice but to try the next logical option available to them?

What if Tsunoda performs no better than Lawson in the seat?

Again, the kind of pressing question that Horner is likely to be asked when he next faces the media.

What we do know is that, unlike Lawson, Tsunoda will not have the benefit of acclimatising to his new car in pre-season testing, with the Japanese driver to be instead thrust straight into the RB21 spotlight in Practice One at his home Suzuka track. He should at least get simulator time to get used to its settings at the team’s Milton Keynes base before flying to Japan.

Tsunoda, despite having greater F1 experience, is also less familiar than Lawson with the main Red Bull team generally given the latter had several years embedded with them as reserve driver.

And while not as substantial as other young drivers elsewhere, Lawson has driven more Red Bull cars in tests than Tsunoda – whose sole run in one of their cars came during a single day in Abu Dhabi at a post-season test in December. A test in which Horner has said, incidentally, that Tsunoda performed well in.

Why didn’t Red Bull sign a more experienced driver for this year?

Well, that’s the thing, they did – Perez.

The problem was that the two-year contract renewal they gave the Mexican veteran for the 2025 and 2026 seasons last June did not serve to help him rediscover his best form.

Struggling with Red Bull’s car and steadily losing confidence in it, Perez finished the season with a return of nine points from the final eight grands prix weekends, and no podiums across the closing 19 events. That effectively cost Red Bull the constructors’ title, making an early split inevitable.

By re-signing Perez, Red Bull chose to overlook the chance to hire Carlos Sainz, their former junior driver, when he was still a free agent on the market after being let go by Ferrari. Explaining that decision, Horner somewhat cryptically said in an interview with Sky Sports News at the end of last season that “you’ve got to look at all the various criteria and dynamics”.

Re-employing Ricciardo at Racing Bulls as an effective insurance option should Perez not get back to his best also ultimately did not work out with the Australian being outperformed by Tsunoda before being replaced by Lawson after the Singapore GP.

Why have so many drivers struggled as Verstappen’s team-mate?

Tsunoda will become the sixth different team-mate to partner Verstappen at Red Bull in 10 seasons.

After Ricciardo left of his own accord for a big-money offer from Renault from 2019, Red Bull’s next two experiments with promising drivers from their own pool – Gasly and Albon – lasted just 12 and 26 races respectively.

That led to them going for Perez from 2021 and, as Red Bull returned to title-winning ways in the following years, that arrangement worked well until mid-2023 when the characteristics of Red Bull’s car started to cause the Mexican repeat problems.

A slightly different car for 2025, but Lawson has found the new RB21 to be just as difficult to tame.

“To drive a Formula 1 car takes 100 per cent confidence in what you’re doing,” he told Sky Sports F1 after qualifying in China.

“It’s not that I don’t feel confident, but the window is so small that right now I just seem to miss it. It’s that that I just need to get a handle of.”

Is Red Bull’s car designed to just suit Verstappen?

A common question asked, although it would be too simplistic to come to that conclusion given Red Bull’s engineers, like all teams’, are simply trying to create the fastest car they can.

The challenge of doing so for Red Bull is currently heightened by the fact that over the past year they have been overtaken by McLaren, and at times other rivals too, in the sport’s pecking order after two seasons of record-breaking dominance.

“Max is quite specific what he wants from a car to make it fast and that is generally a very positive front-end on the car, a very sharp turn-in,” said Horner to Sky Sports F1 in China.

“The consequence of that is it will unsettle the rear of the car and that, for a driver, is tremendously confidence sapping if you’ve got a loose rear end on these cars on entry of corners.

“That’s where [Max] excels. That’s where he’s able to live on a knife’s edge of adhesion and he’s just constantly asking for more and more front out of the car. Of course you are always going to follow the direction of our faster driver and that leads the organisation in terms of its development.”

But that is not to say Verstappen is completely happy with the RB21’s inconsistent handling right now either, saying after qualifying fourth in China that “in every corner the balance is just slightly different from the run before”. His talent, however, has consistently allowed the Dutchman to get far more out of it than his struggling team-mates.

What now for Lawson at Racing Bulls?

From the high of landing what should be one of the grid’s most high-profile seats to the low of losing it within three months, it is hard to imagine Lawson’s confidence won’t have been knocked by how the bruising last month has gone.

If there is a consolation it is that he gets a relatively soft landing back at Racing Bulls, whose car has actually proved one of the surprise packages of the season so far with promising top-10 pace.

He will be expected to lead the team there next to 20-year-old Isack Hadjar who, formation lap gaffe in the Melbourne rain aside, has shown an early turn of speed and confidence in that car.

Indeed, in a perhaps telling disclosure to the Dutch media last week in Shanghai, Verstappen suggested Lawson would actually be faster in a Racing Bulls car than a theoretically faster Red Bull one given how difficult the latter currently is to drive.

And while he never made it back to the main team, the last driver to be promoted and then demoted in the Red Bull stable – Gasly – successfully re-established his reputation back at the junior outfit, winning a race, and is now a mainstay of the grid at Alpine. Albon too, who dropped down to reserve driver after losing his seat to Perez, has thrived since joining Williams.

Whether there is a way back for Lawson at the main team eventually remains to be seen.

What will Verstappen make of it all?

Another question which will be fascinating to find out the answer to over the coming week as the world champion gets used to working with his third different team-mate in the space of four races.

Formula 1 heads to the iconic Suzuka Circuit for the Japanese Grand Prix on April 4-6, live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with NOW – No contract, cancel anytime