Edd's scathing verdict on Red Bull's whole F1 driver strategy [early access]

As Red Bull's Yuki Tsunoda/Liam Lawson seat swap is made official, here's an early look at Edd Straw's searing column on what's gone wrong with the company's F1 driver strategy from top to bottom

The decision to swap Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda reflects terribly on Red Bull’s Formula 1 driver decision-making and strategy.

If Tsunoda fails, it’s yet another bad choice that fails to solve a longstanding problem; if he succeeds, it’s a damning indictment of its process given he was passed over a few months ago. 

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with Red Bull’s desire to have one top gun and a sidekick. This has worked for many teams in the past, and provided there’s a healthy points contribution from your second driver it can be very effective.

The trouble is, there’s more to being a number two than being slower than the team leader. In the case of Red Bull, to invoke an astronomical metaphor, the Goldilocks zone of around three tenths of a second off in qualifying and stockpiling handy points appears prohibitively narrow.

Regardless of whether or not Tsunoda works out, something must change. Red Bull has the choice either of binning this approach and trying to sign another megastar to put alongside Verstappen, or changing the qualities it seeks in its ‘other’ driver.

Red Bull won’t take the first route. While it appeals, and personally I’d generally favour signing the best two drivers available and taking on the tricky task of managing them, switching to the ‘two aces’ strategy would be too big a stretch for Red Bull.

It can continue on its well-established path of picking a wingman, but this has been done so ineptly for years now both in terms of choosing the right candidate and setting them up to thrive that you’d be forgiven for suspecting its mission is to get the worst out of those drivers. That’s strangely incongruous with the all-round excellence of Red Bull F1 in almost every other area.

You can point to all kinds of inflection points where this became a problem, but since the moment Daniel Ricciardo shocked it by taking a $25million-a-year move to Renault rather than re-signing to stay on for 2019 the failure has been relentless. Pierre Gasly had a half-season stint, before being replaced by Alex Albon, who lasted 18 months.

Albon, of course, had already been dropped once by Red Bull’s capricious young driver scheme before being plucked from the brink of a Formula E switch to fill a gap created by myriad other poor decisions in the Red Bull junior ranks.

Albon, too, couldn’t make it work and Red Bull picked Sergio Perez. It was a logical choice given the limited options available as late in the day as the decision for 2021 was made, but only if he was there as a stopgap for a year or two. In the end, Perez lasted four seasons and had to be paid off at vast expense, only to be replaced by a driver who is being ousted after just two events looking like an under-rehearsed Perez tribute act.

Red Bull should be ideally-placed when it comes to its drivers. It’s unique in having a second team in which to prepare and evaluate its proteges and it has a long-established junior scheme, meaning it should always have a viable next-cab-off-the-rank. Instead, every one that’s joined the fray has shed a wheel, to further torture the metaphor indicating that the problem isn’t the taxis themselves but the wider organisation that’s acquiring and maintaining them.

At a time when F1 teams are being increasingly rigorous and scientific in scouring the world for the next big thing, Red Bull’s hit-and-hope strategy is increasingly risible. It’s time to be more rigorous and there are two interconnected ways to do it.

The first is to ensure the young driver scheme sharpens up. That process is under way, with former Sebastian Vettel race engineer Guillaume Rocquelin instrumental in that evolution. Such is the lead time on driver development these days that it will take a while before that can be fully realised and judged.

The second is pertinent to the top end, with the selection of who to promote first to Racing Bulls then into Red Bull Racing. This must take into account the specific demands of being Verstappen’s team-mate. Often, the challenge is combined into one declaration that the car is developed for him and many can’t cope with it. However, there are actually two factors, of which that is one.

A pointy car that responds well to inputs but with a driver who has the exquisite feel to control it without losing confidence and precision will always be the quickest, so a driver like Verstappen, just as Michael Schumacher was, is always difficult to find a team-mate for.

As such, Red Bull needs to be cognisant of the need to identify and develop drivers who have the level of skill needed to do well with such a car. That’s easy to say, and locating candidates who can do that who are themselves not megastars is going to be difficult. But it should at least be in mind.

The other factor is that Verstappen is astoundingly good at manipulating a difficult car to get as close to those characteristics as possible. Give him a car with poor balance or inconsistencies and he will get plenty out of it, while making even a driver of Lawson’s quality – a proven points scorer in second-team machinery – look out of his depth. That means either the need to find drivers who have that same capacity, or a split engineering approach that allows for this and leads to a car that can be set up in a slightly slower, but more usable, way.

Red Bull cannot continue to leave this to chance. This approach has not only cost the team championships, but also an incalculable sum of money when you contemplate the cash wasted and the prize money lost to this weakness. Its driver development programme therefore shouldn’t only be about finding the next superstar, but also finding the lieutenants it needs to achieve the team’s objectives. 

For Red Bull to be in a situation where even the best outcome, that of Tsunoda thriving on his promotion, reflects terribly on it says everything about just how untenable its whole driver situation has become.