The dramatic Red Bull driver swap was reportedly influenced by concerns from the team’s engineering department.
Yuki Tsunoda was promoted to the senior team alongside four-time world champion Max Verstappen, replacing Liam Lawson after just two races in the 2025 F1 season – a brutal move that was not much of a surprise given the team’s ‘decorated’ history firing drivers before the conclusion of their stints.
While the Red Bull driver swap was reported to have been determined during a shareholders meeting in Dubai just after the Chinese Grand Prix, team principal Christian Horner has now revealed his engineers largely influenced the decision.
Liam Lawson’s promotion to Red Bull at the start of the 2025 F1 season was seen as a bold move. The young New Zealander had shown promise during his limited F1 appearances, but stepping into the second seat alongside Verstappen was always going to be an uphill battle.
Unfortunately for Lawson, his tenure at the Milton-Keynes based outfit was short-lived. Struggles with the RB21 car including three consecutive eliminations in Q1 and a crash during the rain-soaked Australian Grand Prix led to mounting pressure on both him and the team.
The early-season woes culminated in one of the quickest mid-season Red Bull driver swaps in the team’s history with the 23-year old getting a demotion back to junior team Racing Bulls.
However, the decision to replace Lawson with Yuki Tsunoda was not made lightly. According to reports, Red Bull’s engineers played a pivotal role in advocating for the change.
“I think with everything that we saw in Australia and China, you could see that it was really affecting Liam quite badly,” Christian Horner told Sky Sports F1.
“We could have left it, and I think that Liam is a driver with talent. Maybe within half a season he would have got there, but we just don’t have that amount of time.
“It was something that was very clear to the engineering side within the team, just how much Liam was struggling with it all, and you could see that weight upon his shoulders.
“The engineers were coming to me very concerned about it, and at the end of the day, I think it was the logical thing to do.”
READ ALSO:
- Yuki Tsunoda’s Red Bull promotion: Embracing “intense pressure” ahead of debut at Japanese GP
- Liam Lawson sacked by Red Bull after a disappointing two-race stint
- Red Bull confirms Liam Lawson’s race engineer for 2025 F1
Horner also admitted Red Bull made a key mistake expecting too much too soon from Lawson who had such little experience before promotion up to the senior team.
“Of course, it’s horrible because you’re taking away someone’s dreams and aspirations, but sometimes you’ve got to be cruel to be kind and I think that in this instance, this is not the end for Liam,” Horner added.
“I was very clear with him: ‘it’s a sample of two races. I think that we’ve asked too much of you too soon’. We have to accept, I think, we were asking too much of him too soon.
“And so this is for him to, again, nurture that talent that we know that he has, back in the Racing Bulls seat, whilst giving Yuki the opportunity and looking to make use of the experience that he has.”
While Horner appears to defend the shocking Red Bull driver swap, the RB21 has proven to be a challenging car to handle even for Verstappen who has struggled to deliver consistent performance so far this season.
READ MORE:
With Red Bull slipping to third in the Constructors’ Championship standings, the team needed a driver with more experience and technical feedback capabilities to help develop the car, and Tsunoda who has been with Racing Bulls since his F1 debut in 2021, was seen as the ideal candidate to step into the role.
Tsunoda’s promotion marks a significant milestone in his career. The Japanese driver had been overlooked for the Red Bull seat just months earlier when Lawson was picked to replace Sergio Pérez.
However, his consistent performances and familiarity with Red Bull’s systems ultimately worked in his favor and he will now face one of the most challenging tasks in Formula 1: partnering Verstappen.
Since Daniel Ricciardo’s departure from the energy drinks manufacturer at the end of 2018, Verstappen has worked alongside four different teammates—Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Sergio Pérez, and Liam Lawson—all of whom struggled to match his pace and adapt to the team’s high-pressure environment.
