Emergency Blog: Red Bull is on fire

I have been sitting here trying to find something witty to say about this situation but they have managed to leave me speechless and confused which does not shock me considering this is male led organization.

Red Bull as an organization is on fire and they are taking as many drivers down with them. As I am writing this no official statement has been made by the team so, until then let’s just talk this out.

Walk with me.

Red Bull is led by Christian Horner as team principal and Marko Helmut as an advisor and oversees the driver development program. Their senior team within the organization has had 4 drivers in their second seat since Daniel Ricciardo left. Their junior team, now VCARB, has had just as much turnover, if not more with them having 4 drivers in 2023 alone. I’m not saying driver turnover is uncommon in the sport, if anything it’s a hazard of the job, but there is no other organization who makes the decision to drop or swap their drivers so frequently. This leads us to the chaos that is happening right now.

Red Bull at the end of last year decided to move on from Checo Perez after holding firm for longer than anyone thought that he was their guy. They made the decision to go with Liam Lawson, who drove for VCARB in various stints over the last two seasons. In this choice, they overlooked Yuki Tsunoda: a loyal and talented driver, who despite the tractor of a car he has been given in the past has provided decent results and growth all while outperforming his teammates.

Now, 2 weekends into the 2025 season, Red Bull has floated and all but confirmed the idea of replacing Liam with Yuki. There are many reasons why this is such a baffling move to me. The first one that comes to mind is that it has only been 2 weekends for Liam being a primary driver in F1. There is a learning curve that comes with that.

My next thought is what happens if Yuki is just as bad in the RB? Where does the team go from there? Are they going to swap the drivers back or leave Yuki to suffer in the RB? This would make me livid because VCARB has a decent car to contend for best of the rest team this season. After the first two weekends they are showing huge amounts of promise with their car. So, why put a driver who have been given a solid chance to compete with a decent car in a worse position with a worse car.

This leads me to the last car on this train of thought: the car is not good. Based on what the car has looked like over the last year and the first two weekends this year - if you take generational talent, 4x world champion Max Verstappen out of the car - it is not producing the results we have become accustom to seeing. The car is a mess and even Max has had a few comments of not being satisfied with the car.

So, if/when they make the decision to swap drivers, I will only suggest this as the next course of action: move the people in charge of the development and creation of the actual car. There is only so long that they can go ahead and blame the driver when the product their team is creating is faulty. There needs to be structural changes made within Red Bull because the longer this continues the more people will realize that it really isn’t the driver but those behind the scenes causing most of the issues that we end up seeing on track. Red Bull fans, I would be calling for someone not in the actual car’s job.

Curious to see where all of this leads us.

Until then, have the most majestic rest of your week.