In his column for speedweek.com, Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko discussed the replacement of Liam Lawson with Yuki Tsunoda and Max Verstappen's car.
Helmut Marko: “On the first race weekend, in Australia, Liam's turbo failed and he couldn't do a single lap in the third practice session. At that point, Liam felt the pressure and started making mistakes.
This trend continued in China, so we had to act quickly before Liam lost confidence completely. It’s worth remembering that his career is not over, he is back at Racing Bulls, a team that is consistently fighting for points, has a much easier car to drive and is not compared to Max Verstappen.
One of the problems that the experienced Sergio Perez could not overcome last year was the nature of our car, which was difficult to drive and only effective in a very narrow range of conditions. The gap to the leader of two or three tenths made the situation even more difficult.
In general, Lawson's confidence was waning, it was obvious, and when he tried to pick up speed, he started making mistakes.
There is nothing unusual about replacing Lawson: we have already done it with Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon, both of whom are still racing in Formula 1 as accomplished drivers with excellent careers.
Of course, there will be many know-it-alls who will ask why we didn't choose Tsunoda from the very beginning? The reason is that Yuki's career has often had ups and downs, he was not distinguished by stability. But now he has made a leap in his development, including in terms of physical fitness, today Tsunoda is a real athlete.
Yuki has shown impressive results in the first two race weekends. What Lawson excelled at in the second half of the 2024 season, we are now seeing in Yuki.
It was a coincidence that the team change and promotion for Honda protege Tsunoda came just before his home race in Japan at Honda's home track. Yuki knows the track well, of course, but so did Lawson. That was not the deciding factor.
Let's talk about the competitiveness of the Red Bull Racing cars. After two race weekends, we can say the following: the RB21 is inferior to the McLaren, this car is difficult to drive and difficult to set up.
In the second part of the race in China, when we set Hard, Max's car worked – he drove at the pace of the leader or even faster. However, to be fair, it should be added that the leading Piastri was not driving at full speed at that moment.
The mistake we made was on the Medium section. Given the high wear during the single practice session and the sprint, Max was too cautious. It's clear now that he should have gone faster.
After returning from China, we had a meeting in Milton Keynes to understand how and when Red Bull Racing will have a winning car again. Max spoke to the engineers, who showed him the direction the car was heading and the next steps to improve it.
Racing Bulls had a good start to the season in terms of pace, but they failed to score any points in China – the team got their strategy wrong. They should have split the strategy of Tsunoda and Hadjar, so that one would have had a one-stop race and the other a two-stop race.
In Melbourne the strategy wasn't perfect either – the cars stayed on track too long. We made two very serious mistakes that cost us 15 points.
The good news is that the Racing Bulls cars are consistently scoring points, even if they are not as strong in the race as they were in qualifying.
In China, shortly before the finish, the front wing on Tsunoda's car collapsed. This should not have happened. We are still investigating whether it was caused by an external impact, say, from some debris on the track, or whether it was a defect in the component itself.
Regarding the results of Yuki and Isaac in the first two weekends, it is possible to say: Tsunoda was impeccable, very fast in qualifying and strong in the races. Hadjar made a mistake in Melbourne on a slippery track, but was surprisingly strong in qualifying. In China, he would have certainly earned his first points, if not for the unsuccessful strategy. For me, Isaac is one of the surprises of the first part of the season. He had not competed in China before, but immediately drove at the level of Yuki – I am impressed.”
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