A Lawson Problem or a RedBull Problem?
Confirmed, Lawson will be swapping seats with Yuki Tsunoda. This is nothing less than a catastrophic failure. Of RedBull. In this article we’ll look at Red Bulls’s mismanagement of it’s drivers, the car and what we could expect from Yuki.
Protecting an investment
There was a running joke at Chelsea among the new players, that the club gave them zero help when they arrived. Regardless of where they were coming from and regardless of how good their English was.
No help finding a house, no help finding a hotel while they were looking for a house, no help with hairdressers, garages, restaurants, how to pay electricity bills nothing.
Fair enough if you’re getting paid 60K a year and you’re British. If you’re from Italy, with limited English and you’re costing your company 60K a week it seems downright reckless to leave your investment in the wind.
Where am I going with this?
Liam Lawson has been nowhere and it seems like RedBull have absolutely no idea why. They are so clueless they have gone for the nuclear option of swapping drivers after two races.
The swap might work. It might not.
If they don’t understand what they have done wrong I’d say they are doomed to see a repeat.
Clearly Lawson is not a driver who should be running at the back.
Clearly the car can not be that bad.
So if it’s not the car and it’s not the driver there is only one thing left and that is the team.
Lawson must be getting absolutely atrocious advice from the team around him.
For whatever reason they’ve created a setup and an environment that has caused a very good driver to lose his way. (If you believe he has really been that bad in the first two races and I do not).
What to do?
If you are in the team, what do you do? Do you get a new driver or do you try to understand the issue?
Do you keep burning out clutches on your car or do you adjust your driving style?
You may have to admit you’re a bad driver but you can only fix a problem when you admit you have one.
Not the first time
If this is the first time it’s happened then you could say, maybe, it’s the driver, but RedBull go through drivers like toothbrushes. At what point do they say “we have to change the way we are managing the drivers”
Or is it the car?
Or have they gone so far down a technical dead end with Verstappen it’s going to take a complete rebuild of the car.
Has development been so focussed on Verstappen and what makes him faster that they have painted themselves into a corner.
Sure he’s a great driver but you have to look at the other guys using the car and see what they are doing. If you have three fast guys struggling to keep up with Verstappen perhaps you have to say it’s the wrong direction design wise.
Perhaps Verstappen has a flaw in his driving style, perhaps the car has evolved to hide this flaw in his style and in the process you have reached a dead end with development. You have done such a good job overcoming a idiosyncrasy with one driver’s style that you’ve made massive compromises to the design as a whole. Compromises that if you were to optimise re-expose the flaw of your fastest driver.
Of course, this is pure speculation from someone with no contact with the team but how can the same bad things be happening over and over again. And not only are the same things happening ie the second driver not being up with your lead driver, but the distance between the lead driver and your new superstar second driver is getting bigger and bigger.
Insanity
It seems to the layman that RedBull F1 are on the wrong path and as the results start to falter they are doubling down on the same strategy of optimizing the car for the number one driver, a strategy that has got you into this place to start with.
Or is it Lawson?
Or perhaps Lawson is the problem. Two races is nothing, even for RedBull. Is it possible that Lawson’s attitude has alienated the team to such an extent that they’ve called it a day. Is he not listening to their advice so the team feels they’ve been left with no choice but to go with another driver? I guess it’s possible and Peter Windsor has highlighted a bit of stubbornness with Lawson’s attitude.
If it is a case of Lawson’s attitude and not the team then perhaps there is hope for Tsunoda. Perhaps the support structure is there and he can thrive.
Peter Windsor has also done a video on the driving style of Verstappen. In short he turns in early and squares of the apex. Which, according to this video is what Tsunoda also does.
RedBull may have stumbled into the sewer and come out with a Rolex on their wrist.
If the change happens, the Japanese grand prix should give us a reasonable indication of how the rest of their season is going to go. But it would be ironic if Tsunoda gets outscored by Lawson.
