What Red Bull’s Ricciardo problem means for Liam Lawson

By Andrew Potter

Red Bull’s Formula One operation has a problem on its hands: what to do with the globally popular but generally slow Daniel Ricciardo.

So far, 2024 has been another season of underperformance for the wide-smiling Australian, who has been thumped by teammate Yuki Tsunoda – a driver generally considered to be one Ricciardo should be dominating.

Ricciardo had barely turned a wheel in practice for the Canadian Grand Prix a fortnight ago when his shaky form attracted the attention of 1997 Formula One (F1) champion Jacques Villeneuve.

“Why’s he still in F1? Why?” pondered Villeneuve. “We are hearing the same thing now for the last four or five years. ‘We have to make the car better for him.’ Sorry, it’s been five years of that. No, you are in F1.

“If you can’t cut it, go home, there’s someone else to take your place.”

That someone should be Liam Lawson, the Kiwi who immediately eclipsed Tsunoda during their five races together in 2023.

As usual, Lawson was in Montreal as the reserve driver for Red Bull’s two teams and was seen sharing a laugh with Red Bull team boss Christian Horner and the main team’s second driver Sergio Perez.

Ricciardo did his best to dislodge Villeneuve’s narrative before it could stick, by putting in his best performance of the season for a Grand Prix, qualifying fifth on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve (a track named after Jacques’ legendary father).

Ricciardo then confirmed Villeneuve was firmly under his skin, suggesting the Canadian “eat s***”, and duly delivered his best result of the year on Sunday, finishing eighth in a rain-hit race with plenty of incidents. Inconveniently, one of those saw Tsunoda lose control and crash out, when the Japanese driver was two places ahead of Ricciardo, despite starting three places behind.

Rarely has an eighth place by a driver of Ricciardo’s stature generated so much commentary from the sport’s expert observers.

By allowing himself to be triggered by Villeneuve, Ricciardo made sure that questions over his form are still up for discussion going into this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona.

Heavyweight Sky Sports F1 pundit Martin Brundle said in his post-Canada column that Riccardo has been on a downhill trajectory since fleeing Red Bull Racing at the end of 2018, rather than stay on for more seasons as Verstappen’s teammate.

“Ricciardo never seemed to be quite the same driver again,” said Brundle. “He clearly still does have speed and race craft, as we witnessed also in the Miami Sprint [where Ricciardo finished fourth], but something in his psyche or approach is holding that back and it’s costing him opportunity and longevity.”

With his current one-year contract reported to be worth US$7 million ($11.3m) no one can blame Ricciardo for trying to hang on to a seat at motorsport’s top table and extend his F1 career for as long as possible. What’s less clear is why Red Bull continues to stick by him.

As noted by British F1 journalist Glenn Freeman in The Race, Red Bull used to be famed for being ruthless in firing underperforming drivers. But in terms of driver line-ups, it’s now one of the sport’s most conservative operations.

Case in point: Ricciardo. After being paid not to race in the final season of his contract with McLaren, Ricciardo was on the bench for 2023, before being thrown a lifeline by Horner and placed in the AlphaTauri team (now Racing Bulls) at the expense of Dutchman Nyck de Vries.

The idea was that Ricciardo would rediscover the form which took him to eight Grand Prix wins, and dozens of podium finishes, and make him favourite to replace Perez as Verstappen’s teammate at Red Bull.

That form hasn’t materialised with anything approaching consistency, and Red Bull have surprisingly elected to re-sign Perez for at least 2025 and possibly 2026, shutting the gate on the very reason Ricciardo was thought to have been brought back in the first place.

Riccardo’s marketability as one of the stars of Netflix’s hit Drive to Survive series is thought to be extremely valuable to both the Red Bull brand and Formula 1 as a business. The BBC’s Andrew Benson reports that the 34-year-old is tight with Red Bull boss Horner – and this year Horner has needed all the allies he can get, as an unprecedented civil war broke out in Formula One′s top team.

Horner was nearly toppled at the start of the season amid allegations he’d bombarded his female personal assistant with dozens of sleazy WhatsApp messages. One side of Red Bull – rumoured to be the company’s 81-year-old motorsport adviser Helmut Marko, the Austrians who own 49% of the Red Bull company and Max Verstappen’s notoriously loose-cannon dad Jos – wanted Horner out. But the plucky Horner is tight with the Thais who own the majority 51% of Red Bull, and he kept his job.

That’s where Ricciardo comes in.

Loyalists appear to have been rewarded, with the apolitical Perez re-signed much earlier than expected. Red Bull announced in Canada that it had re-signed Tsunoda for 2025.

So what does this mean for Lawson?

The Herald’s world exclusive story from March suggested that Riccardo had been given a literal hurry-up from Marko, being warned to improve his performances in Japanese and Chinese Grands Prix, or be replaced by Lawson for Miami.

Ricciardo failed to finish in both those races, but at least managed to outqualify Tsunoda in Japan, and Marko’s alleged threat never resulted in action. Its understood that while Lawson is backed by Marko, Ricciardo has the same support from Horner, leaving the team at an impasse over the direction of its junior side.

But the stories of Ricciardo being dropped persist.

Following the Canadian Grand Prix, respected British journalist Joe Saward suggested in his blog that Ricciardo would be ejected from Racing Bulls after the Belgian Grand Prix on July 28, unless he can dramatically improve.

“At the moment it looks like Lawson could get the drive after the summer break [July 28 to August 23],” wrote Saward, “But if Ricciardo suddenly starts doing World Champion-like performances, Red Bull will have a problem. If Red Bull does not give the seat to Lawson, he will be free to go and that rather defeats the purpose of spending huge sums of money on junior teams.”

As of this week, nine of Formula One′s 20 seats are available – but Lawson’s name is only being connected to one – and it’s occupied by Ricciardo.

There’s another danger for the New Zealander looming in the form of Red Bull-backed French-Algerian driver Isack Hadjar in Formula Two.

Hadjar, who showed incredible reaction speeds in avoiding a monster crash in Monaco, sits second in the F2 series, with two wins so far this season. Red Bull will no doubt be trying to figure out whether Hadjar has more potential than Ricciardo or Lawson.

Being leapfrogged by Hadjar into the Racing Bulls team would be even more cruel to Lawson than making him watch Ricciardo’s current mediocrity.

This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission