F1’s cruel side is on show as Red Bull to fire Liam Lawson after 2 races

That was before a mediocre time at Alpine and a disastrous stint at McLaren, and while Drive to Survive's producers would no doubt have loved the redemption story of Ricciardo returning to Red Bull, it wasn't to be, as the speed just wasn't there.

The entire point of having the junior Racing Bull team is so Red Bull's driver program has another pair of race seats to allow its young drivers to get experience. But in practice, it hasn't really been much of a success.

Neither Max Verstappen nor Sebastian Vettel (the team's previous four-time champion) were properly part of the young driver program, nor was Perez. And the racers who were promoted to the Red Bull seat—Danny Kvyat, Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon—all fell short of Red Bull's expectations and were replaced.

There may have been doubts about Tsunoda's speed when he first joined the Racing Bull team (then called Alpha Tauri) back in 2021, but five years on, the Japanese driver has silenced those doubts. Promoting Tsunoda to the main squad seemed an obvious fix to the Perez problem, but Red Bull bosses Christian Horner and Helmut Marko evidently believed otherwise. Instead, for 2025, they went with Lawson, lifting him up from a reserve role that led to 11 races over a couple of years.

And that has been a disaster. This year's Red Bull is very much not the fastest car in the field—that's the McLaren, for now. Depending on the day, the Red Bull might only be the fourth fastest car, behind Ferrari and Mercedes, too, at least while Verstappen is driving it. In years past, a heavy revision to the car might have solved things. But with F1's budget cap, a team like Red Bull can no longer spend its way out of the problem.