The Liam Lawson data Red Bull won’t want to see

Liam Lawson is under scrutiny after just two races with Red Bull in the F1 2025 season. With zero points on the board and very poor qualifying results, rumours of an imminent driver change surround the New Zealand driver.

Lawson could not have had a worse start to the 2025 season with Red Bull. The New Zealander was expected to change Sergio Pérez’s bad momentum in the team’s second seat alongside Max Verstappen, but the reality is that Lawson’s data in his first races is worse than that of the Mexican driver in his last races with Red Bull.

Liam Lawson: The truth behind the Red Bull numbers

In his last three qualifying sessions with Red Bull, Pérez achieved a P16 in the Sprint Qualifying of Qatar, a P9 in the normal qualifying in Qatar, and a P10 in his final Grand Prix, the Abu Dhabi GP.

He reached Q3 in the last two, with an average gap to Verstappen of +0.753s. A huge gap… but not worse than Lawson’s.

In his first three qualifying sessions with Red Bull, Lawson was P18 in Australia, last in the Sprint Qualifying of China, and last again in the Chinese GP ‘classic’ qualifying. Truly worrying numbers.

The average gap to Verstappen is +0.880s. More than a tenth behind Perez and this is not taking into account Verstappen’s Q3 laps, which would make the gap visibly larger.

In Australia, his first qualifying as a Red Bull driver, Lawson visibly struggled with the handling of his RB21. With a different setup to Verstappen, using a more pointy nose and front wing, the New Zealander completed a very nervous first Q1 attempt and went wide at Turn 10 on his second attempt when he was on a negative delta of -0.442s.

Even with that delta, he would not have made it through to Q2. With a lap time of 1:17.094, the New Zealand driver was far from the 1:16.805 Pérez achieved in Q1 in Australia 2024 and even further from the 1:16.274 the Mexican set to finish P3 in qualifying last season.

Despite all teams improving with their new cars, Lawson was nowhere near up to the task, setting a worse time in an apparently evolved car. Verstappen did manage to beat his pole from last year by more than four-tenths.

Lawson especially struggled with direction changes in the fast Turns 9 and 10 and the braking into Turn 1 at the Albert Park circuit. Looking at the telemetry, it’s hard to find a point where he beats Verstappen.

Attacking corner entry in the Red Bull seems to be something only the Dutch driver can control, and it has mercilessly buried his recent teammates. Lawson was more than a second slower than Verstappen in Q1.

The race wasn’t any better. Trying something different and hoping for the rain to stop, Lawson lost control of the RB21’s rear axle on lap 47 of the Grand Prix and crashed into the wall on the exit of Turn 2. A debut to forget and one that seemed like it couldn’t get worse in China.

But it did get worse in Shanghai. This time with the Sprint format, Lawson qualified last in the Sprint Qualifying, once again struggling to get the RB21 to turn in properly and consequently losing traction on exit.

With a second chance to do better in Saturday’s qualifying, Lawson disappointed again. Despite clearly improving his lap time compared to SQ, the New Zealander again finished in last position, just over two-tenths short of making it into Q2.

Even though the qualifying data is concerning, the race performance isn’t any better. With zero points scored, only Verstappen has contributed in the three point-scoring events to place Red Bull in third position in the Constructors’ Championship.

At this stage in 2024, Red Bull had the most dominant car and were leading with 87 points, 36 of which came from Pérez. Right now, they are ironically third with the same amount of points scored by the Mexican: 36 points, a 41.38% drop compared to last season.

Obviously, Lawson is not solely to blame for that figure. McLaren is now the leading force on the grid. But even if the RB21 is not the most competitive car, his bosses won’t find it acceptable that his score remains at zero and that both Yuki Tsunoda and Isack Hadjar with the VCARB 02 from Racing Bulls are outperforming him with ease.

All of this confirms that Pérez was not the problem for Red Bull in 2024. Nor is Lawson, although the New Zealander is clearly not meeting the minimum level. The Milton Keynes team has created two single-seaters in the last two seasons that only Verstappen is able to tame, sometimes with more ease than others.

Christian Horner and Helmut Marko now have an important decision to make: keep trusting Lawson and help his adaptation or find a driver who can adapt to the complex handling characteristics of the RB21. Otherwise, this could become an endless story… and only two races of the 24-race calendar have passed.