Liam Lawson has had a disastrous start to his Red Bull career as he has failed to get out of Q1/SQ1 in all three qualifying sessions he has competed in this year.
And to make matters worse, several reports have claimed that Red Bull have already decided to replace the New Zealander with Yuki Tsunoda after just two races.
Red Bull have often snubbed the Japanese in the past because of his poor temperament. However, with Lawson now having underperformed massively, it seems that the Milton Keynes-based outfit are left without a choice but to get Tsunoda on board from the Japanese GP onwards.
Although Tsunoda has not been looked at favorably in the past, former Haas team principal Guenther Steiner believes that the 24-year-old has turned a leaf when it comes to his temperament.
“Yuki was, in the beginning, a little bit of a mess, but now I think he [has] got his act together. I mean he’s quick [and] he’s consistent,” said the 59-year-old on the Red Flags podcast.
Yuki Tsunoda will swap seats with Liam Lawson as Max Verstappen’s teammate for next week’s Japanese Grand Prix after a Red Bull meeting in Dubai, according to multiple reports.
They said an official announcement was expected later in the week. pic.twitter.com/reboclA7zy
— ESPN F1 (@ESPNF1) March 25, 2025
With Lawson having performed miserably for Red Bull, the expectations certainly cannot be too high for Tsunoda. However, the Italian-American believes that Tsunoda is likely to deliver better performances and that too on a consistent basis. As for Lawson’s sake, Steiner hopes that the New Zealander gets one final opportunity in Japan.
Steiner sympathizes with Lawson
Although Steiner agrees that Red Bull should switch drivers, he still sympathizes with Lawson. Matching four-time champion Max Verstappen has never been easy for any of the Dutchman’s past teammates, and with Lawson not even having completed a full F1 season yet, the task given to him was obviously an incredibly hard one.
Steiner then added how Lawson’s troubles in the RB21 seem to suggest that his predecessor, Sergio Perez’s, performances were not that awful after all.
“The teammate [Lawson] being a second off, that is the scary thing, you know. Last year, when Checo was in there [and] when he was half a second off, we were all devastated; ‘how can you be half a second off,'” Steiner added.
Although Lawson is performing even worse than Perez, Steiner still believes that the New Zealander deserves one more chance to redeem himself at the Suzuka International Circuit, a track where he raced extensively at during the junior categories. As things stand, it doesn’t look like that is going to be the case, with all the reports that have emerged.
