Explained: Why is Red Bull’s second seat so cursed?

We’re just two races into the 2025 Formula 1 season, and rumours are swirling that Red Bull Racing is looking into replacing Liam Lawson. But is it Lawson’s fault? Or is Red Bull’s second seat simply cursed?

We’re taking a look through Red Bull’s history with Max Verstappen to better understand Liam Lawson’s struggle.

Red Bull: The Max Verstappen Effect

Is Red Bull’s second seat cursed, or is Max Verstappen just that good? Let’s talk about it.

When Red Bull signed Verstappen and launched him from Formula 3 to Formula 1 in 2015, it was clear the team from Milton Keynes felt it had found a generational talent. Even with the junior Toro Rosso team, it was obvious that this teenage driver was destined for the big leagues if he could manage to reign in his temper and better manage his race craft.

And, when he was promoted to Red Bull partway through the 2016 season, he proved that by winning his debut race, the Spanish Grand Prix. Verstappen consistently climbed up the drivers’ championship standings until, in 2021, he took his first title.

Ever since that first win, Red Bull Racing has organized itself around Verstappen — possibly to the detriment of the other drivers who have raced for the team.

Back on February 28, 2023, Alex Albon penned an article for The Players’ Tribune titled “The Test.” In it, he spoke candidly about his challenging experience at Red Bull, and he very eloquently described something that a lot of people have already suspected: Red Bull builds its car around Verstappen.

In that article, Albon wrote:

This isn’t to throw shade at anyone at Red Bull Racing or Max or anything, honestly. But the car is set up in a unique way that is built around the lead driver, and that’s Max. And, look, I totally get why. I mean, when all is said and done, he might be the greatest driver of all time. But he has a very distinct style of driving, and he likes the car set up a certain way that’s hard for a lot of drivers to sync up with. Of course, you can tinker and tweak your own car, but just the Red Bull in general is suited to Max’s style.

As he describes it, Albon is a guy who likes “a lot of front-end and nose.” Compared to his teammates throughout his career, he says he’s always had way more nose. But on the Red Bull, it was overwhelming.

He likens it to playing Call of Duty with the sensitivity turned way up. “There was so much nose on that thing that if you blew on the wheel the car would turn,” Albon says.

Now, if you were Red Bull Racing, and you had hired one of the world’s best and most promising drivers, of course you’d build your car around him. But from the way Albon describes it, Verstappen is an outlier in the way he wrangles his cars. That means anyone who gets behind the wheel is going to have a huge learning curve just to get used to the car.

Add that to the pressure that comes with racing for — and very publicly struggling with — a top-tier team, plus the knowledge that there are always hungry drivers waiting to take your place, and you’re in for a bad time.

More on Liam Lawson’s future:

👉 Is Liam Lawson facing replacement after just two races with Red Bull?

👉 Why Max Verstappen cannot paper over Red Bull’s cracks forever

Red Bull’s choices since Daniel Ricciardo

But how dramatically different has Max Verstappen’s performance been when compared to his Red Bull teammates?

Last year on PlanetF1.com, I tracked Verstappen’s stats compared to every open-wheel teammate he’s ever had, all the way back to Formula 3 and into his earliest days at Toro Rosso. The results are pretty shocking: Verstappen has outperformed every teammate he’s ever had in almost every single metric. Ever.

Verstappen’s most closely matched teammate at Red Bull Racing was Daniel Ricciardo — but even then, the Dutch driver scored more points, won more races, finished on the podium more times, finished higher in the race, and qualified better than his more-experienced teammate during their 58-race stint between 2016 and 2018.

The only metric they differed on? Pole positions. Verstappen didn’t score any. Ricciardo nabbed two.

This is a critical era for Verstappen, because this is when he began to ascend to first-driver status. When he joined Red Bull five races into the 2016 season, he was still a teenager, and he was partnering up with Daniel Ricciardo, a longtime Red Bull junior who had become the team’s best championship hope after Sebastian Vettel left for Ferrari.

During this era, the team clearly began to shift its focus from Daniel Ricciardo to Max Verstappen — and when it was clear that he was no longer the favorite, Ricciardo departed for Renault.

Verstappen’s next two teammates were Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon. Gasly, a Red Bull junior, was promoted up from Toro Rosso for exactly 12 races during his second year of F1 competition, and the pressure seemed to crush him before he ever found his footing. During that period, Verstappen scored 180 points. Gasly took a mere 63.

But Gasly did not impress, and Red Bull dropped him partway through the year in favor of rookie Alex Albon.

Just 12 races into his Formula 1 career, Alex Albon was given an impossible task: Outperform Max Verstappen. Unfortunately, despite finishing his first season strong as a Red Bull driver, Albon clearly lagged behind the more experienced Verstappen, and he was dropped in 2020.

Per Albon’s article in the Players’ Tribune, he felt proud of his performance, “But F1 is a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business most of the time,” and when the COVID-19 pandemic restricted travel and racing, Albon lost out on the critical track time he needed to get up to speed. After 26 races as Verstappen’s teammate, he was dropped.

At this point, it seems as though Red Bull realized something needed to change. Clearly, promoting young drivers to the top team and expecting them to perform alongside a driver who was quickly becoming one of the best in the world was a losing task. So, for 2021, Red Bull signed Sergio Perez.

In signing Sergio Perez, Red Bull took a risk. It hedged its bets on a driver outside of its own junior program — albeit one with a decade of F1 experience to draw from. If anyone could bring the seemingly impenetrable Verstappen back down to reality — or, at the very least, if anyone could play a consistent second fiddle — it would be Perez.

Things started off strong for Perez. He helped the team secure its first World Constructors’ Championships since the Vettel era, and in early 2024, he inked a contract extension with Red Bull almost immediately before a drastic performance fall-off.

Perez’s future was already in doubt heading into the summer break, but Red Bull opted to retain him through the end of 2024, with the announcement that full-season rookie Liam Lawson would take over in 2025.

What’s Red Bull’s status in 2025?

Now, here we are. It’s 2025, and after starting just 11 Grands Prix in two years as a Daniel Ricciardo replacement, Liam Lawson is a Red Bull driver, and he hasn’t scored a single point so far.

Lawson is the first of Verstappen’s teammates to be younger than the Dutch champion, and he also boasts a pretty formidable resumé in the junior categories. However, he also joined the team during a distinct slump.

Starting at the 2024 Miami Grand Prix, Red Bull experienced a fall-off in pace that its latest car, the RB21, hasn’t fully rectified yet. Last year, Verstappen lost his chokehold on the top step of the podium as his car grew more challenging to drive.

Red Bull struggled to introduce mid-season updates that could counter the improvements seen by McLaren, Mercedes, and Ferrari. The car was plagued by issues with balance, downforce, ride height, and the departure of critical minds like designer Adrian Newey.

Those issues only seem to have grown worse over the off-season, with Red Bull losing its way a bit. Now, even Verstappen is finding the car to be too challenging to wrangle — and if he can’t control the car, well, it’s impossible to think anyone else could, either.

Certainly not a driver with just 11 Grands Prix under his belt, who is racing a difficult car for the first time. Liam Lawson never really had a chance.

So, is Red Bull Racing’s second seat cursed? Has the back-to-back nature of a wet-weather street circuit and a sprint race simply made it harder for Liam Lawson to get a feel for the car?

Has Red Bull designed itself into a rut that even Max Verstappen is struggling with? Or has Red Bull’s cutthroat nature finally come back to sting itself?

The answer likely involves some or all of the above.

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