Red Bull aiming to "protect" Liam Lawson as the indomitable task of being Max Verstappen's teammate gets closer

Red Bull's Christian Horner has shared that the team is looking to protect Liam Lawson from expectations that pressure a young driver. The Kiwi will replace Sergio Perez on the team after the Mexican was released from his contract earlier than the stipulated timeline.

As quoted by RacingNews365, Horner acknowledged that on the team's side too, a level of work needs to be done where the car would have a bigger operating window than its previous iteration. The Red Bull boss also emphasized the need to protect Lawson from expectations that hampered young drivers like Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon in the past. He said:

"Daniel and Max (Verstappen) were a strong pairing, we then had two juniors that struggled and that's why Checo [Perez] stepped into the car for the 2021 season, and coped with the pressure. The other factor we're focused very hard on is making sure that we're creating a wider operating window with the RB21 than the RB20, which was very narrow and was a peaky performance window. For us to create a broader window will hopefully help Liam find a more forgiving car than the RB20 could be on occasion.

One thing we will be looking to do is protect Liam from expectation, and of course, when Alex and Pierre were with the team, Max wasn't the four-time world champion. He hadn't won a world championship at that point, but we have a very clear positioning within the team with where Max is at in his career, and what we need from the second driver."

Lawson has been a Red Bull junior driver for a long time, and the Austrian brand has played a major role in his growth through the junior categories. That said, the driver's run in F1 has been very restricted because of his limited opportunities. He competed in F1 for just six races in 2023 as Daniel Ricciardo's replacement, who injured his wrist in an accident. In 2024, he was brought back to replace the Australian again at RB to assess how good he was against Yuki Tsunoda, as Red Bull was looking for a replacement for the senior team.

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Max Verstappen's history of dominating his Red Bull teammates

Max Verstappen has been on a rampage when it comes to his teammates at Red Bull ever since Daniel Ricciardo left the team in 2018. Since then, there have been three different drivers who have been his teammates, and all of them have been dominated and had their confidence crushed.

The first was Pierre Gasly, who was at sea with the team. His somewhat combative nature in the media meant the French driver was dropped from the team after just six months. The next driver to join the team was Alex Albon, who was part of the team for 18 months but almost never comfortable enough with the team.

Sergio Perez joined the team in 2021 and was part of Red Bull for four years. Looking back, it does seem that the Mexican was part of the squad for this long because the Austrian brand went on a dominant run that papered over some of the cracks of his driving.

Liam Lawson has a challenge going into 2025, and it will be interesting to see how he tackles it.