Liam Lawson gets little support from Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen, who suggests a return to the Racing Bulls.
With RB bosses meeting this week to discuss the New Zealander’s future (or not) with the team, his Dutch teammate offered little comfort.
“If you look at the difference between the two drivers at the other teams, they are all closer together,” said the four-time world champion.
“It also shows that our car is extremely tough,” he added.
“I think if you put Liam in the Racing Bulls car, he will go faster. I really think so. That car is easier to drive than ours.”
Easier to drive because it was created for Max is the fact of the matter, almost all of his previous teammates having suffered similar struggles.
However, while Lawson insists he needs time, Christian Horner admits that the team needs both drivers scoring points.
All the mess of the Horner saga aside, the Austrian team is clearly hurting. It has lost a number of high profile personnel to rivals and its car is still outclassed by at least two, possibly three, other teams.
Last year it paid the price after dithering over whether to drop Sergio Perez, and now, having promoted Lawson, for fear of losing him Helmut Marko warned at the time, they are pondering whether to replace him with either a driver they’d previously rejected or a rookie.
Of course, if we were in a conspiracy theory state of mind we’d suggest a deal that would see Franco Colapinto return to Williams and Carlos Sainz freed up to return to Red Bull.
Then, of course, Flavio Briatore, never one to miss out on a money earner, might already be eyeing the second Red Bull berth for his young Argentine.
