An attempt at choosing Verstappen's 2025 Red Bull team-mate

Should everything go as expected, then Red Bull's second car will be occupied by Liam Lawson - not Sergio Perez - in 2025. Although extricating himself out of the pressure cooker would be good for Perez, who has the opportunity to take time away from being bludgeoned around the face on a weekly basis with the ramifications of his own underperformance, he's not keen to do it. He insists, defiantly, that he'll be racing there next year - even if it's probably not good for him.

Red Bull views Lawson as the least problematic option for the second seat, out of those it has available. He's a consistent performer, even if his outright pace is down on RB team-mate Yuki Tsunoda, and is likely to play the dutiful number two role to Max Verstappen to keep the still-reigning champion sweet.

And those are all admirable qualities to have, underpinned by the Kiwi being a pretty rapid pedaler on his day. But is he, of all the Red Bull-affiliated or free agent drivers around, the best option? Should Christian Horner be swallowing his pride and pre-conceived notions about Yuki Tsunoda and give the Japanese driver a shot? Or would the team be better off looking externally?

The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind - in this case, "the wind" being an abstract euphemism for needless calculations that attempt to measure up the drivers on equal footing based on their 2024 performances. There's going to be two ways we do this using the driver's supertimes: one using the average supertimes over the year, and another based on race lap data from a set race.

The average supertime method

For this, we're going to base the driver performance off their supertimes. This is the driver's percentage gap versus a theoretical best (100%) time based on those set at a given venue. For example, taking the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Lando Norris set the best time of the weekend; Oscar Piastri was second-best, with his time 0.253% greater than his team-mate's best lap. This equates to Piastri being about 0.2s slower over the Yas Marina layout.

Verstappen is our obvious benchmark here, and we'll assess where Perez, Tsunoda, and Lawson stack up. For fun, we'll also throw Valtteri Bottas, Kevin Magnussen, and Franco Colapinto into the mix to determine if Red Bull would be better off looking outside of its driver academy.

The season-average supertimes are readily available to us, but what we need to do is 'normalise' them against car performance. This has an inherent flaw in that, if a driver is the quicker of the two over a full season, then the supertime will tend towards their value.

Verstappen is the benchmark for the supertime test given his dominance over team-mates at Red Bull

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

In theory, if a poor driver has a team-mate who is considerably worse, they can show up slightly better in terms of pace. Regardless, this will give us a general idea of where a driver's qualifying pace would generally stack up in similar machinery, assuming the car's average supertime value represents the ultimate pace of the car.

To illustrate this further, we'll then assume a 1m30s laptime as the 100% time and determine the laptimes set by each driver in theoretically equal machinery. Here are the numbers below:

(where ST denotes supertime, xP is expected percentage, and laptime is a function of that percentage of a 1m30s lap)

Based on this, we have a theoretical grid - Verstappen leads it, but it's Bottas that joins him on the front row of the grid, followed by Tsunoda, Colapinto, Lawson, Magnussen, and Perez.

What this does demonstrate, even just looking at the supertimes overall, is that Tsunoda has a current pace advantage over Lawson.

For a start, this writer does not believe that Perez is the weakest driver of the crop on pure talent; it's his disparity to the Red Bull's upper ceiling in performance that does for him here. For Bottas, he experiences the inverse; as he was head-and-shoulders above Zhou Guanyu for about 90% of the season (points in Qatar notwithstanding), he was largely responsible for setting Sauber's overall supertime ranking.

What this does demonstrate, even just looking at the supertimes overall, is that Tsunoda has a current pace advantage over Lawson. This is ultimately something that can change with experience; for example, Tsunoda was a full one-percent slower than Pierre Gasly on average during his first F1 season in 2021, but by the end of 2022 had closed that deficit to 0.25% - an impressive rate of progress versus a highly regarded driver.

The numbers also suggest that Colapinto would be a faster prospect than Lawson; the Argentine immediately impressed on entering Formula 1 and got very close to Alex Albon's pace from the get-go, but Colapinto's recent races have struggled to temper that speed with the notion of not crashing. He's either driven within himself to keep it clean, or gone all out and paid the price.

Either way, this gives us some semblance of which drivers would be handiest versus Verstappen in qualifying, and logic would dictate that Bottas would trouble Verstappen moreso given the Finn's usual proximity to Lewis Hamilton over one lap during their time at Mercedes. Within a tenth, however, might be a touch optimistic.

Tsunoda, pictured here testing for Red Bull in Abu Dhabi, shows up as the faster option over Lawson

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

The race lap data

Taking laptime data from specific races is a lot more prone to variance compared to average qualifying differences over a season, given the effect of different tyre compounds, traffic, damage, and other variables that can make or break a Sunday afternoon.

However, because the supertimes are pretty much entirely dependent on qualifying, it does not paint the picture of how a car or a driver generally performs over a longer distance. We could theoretically extrapolate the supertimes across a race distance, but this does not paint a particularly accurate picture. The goal here is to divorce car performance from the drivers; supertimes will have their place in the calculations here, but there will be a situation element here pertaining to the real world.

This is also difficult to assess, in that we have a limited sample of races in which all seven drivers listed had competed in, let alone finished, together. To widen this, we're going to take the fastest 10 continuous laps, and worst 10 continuous laps, from each driver from a handful of races where all seven have applicable data.

This leaves us with Las Vegas and Austin - hardly ideal sample sets, but enough to vaguely gesticulate in the direction of their best 10-lap stints and work out where each driver stands in terms of long-run pace, and then collect our averages. Then, we'll intepret those figures.

We'll take Magnussen out of the equation at this point, purely for simplicity (and in the interests of time) - so the remaining six will have a chance to demonstrate their race pace.

After the calculations, here's a snapshot of each driver's average best race pace, and average worst across respective 10-lap samples for each race:

With a sample set of two races, the numbers are easily influenced by a driver having an off-weekend, but there are clear patterns within the data that allow for comparison between the drivers.

Perez has been a step behind Verstappen almost all season long

Photo by: Michael Potts / Motorsport Images

Firstly, let's address Verstappen and Perez: the former did not have particularly good race pace in Austin which brings him down a little, but there is a clear 0.2-0.3s gap between the two at the top end across the two US races.

And, although Perez's ceiling isn't too far away, his floor is almost two seconds per lap down on Verstappen. And that's not just over a handful of laps - this is across two races, where his slowest 10-lap spells have been significantly under. Where Verstappen was on the cusp of high 1m39s-1m40s across his slowest Austin stint, Perez was in the 1m41s-1m42s.

Lawson's end-of-race Austin stint brings him ahead of Tsunoda in the average best stints but, like Perez, the lower point of his variance is also lower. Tsunoda does not show the race pace peaks in these two races, but he's altogether much more consistent. And, interestingly, Perez's slowest 10-lap sample average is actually on a par with Lawson's, even though the Kiwi's car is evidently much worse off in the overall performance stakes.

It's evident that Perez is no longer the man for the job at Red Bull

Our wildcard options of Colapinto and Bottas also yield some interesting results: in the case of the Williams driver, his numbers are pretty much level with Lawson's at the top end and a little below during the slower stints. Bottas is at the bottom of this order on both counts, although that's largely down to the Sauber being even further away in general pace.

And, of the stints, Colapinto had the best 10-lap stretch of anyone in Austin - even Verstappen - in our data, but did not match that with the same consistency. This is due to the timing of the Argentine's medium-tyre stint, as he opted for a contrary hard-medium strategy versus the medium-hard run by almost everyone else. He got the advantage of more pace on the faster tyre with less fuel on board.

Bottas' deficit is largely down to Austin and being forced to run to a very long hard-tyre stint; in Vegas, he was a bit more of a match for the Williams and RB pace as Sauber introduced a new floor for the weekend. But at this juncture, we can probably discount him from the final reckoning - his 2024 pace is too inconclusive.

What does this all mean?

Interpreting this data when you've got so many variables and no real way of divorcing driver pace from car pace is tough, but there are some very real conclusions that we can make from what we have.

With Perez no longer the best option, is Lawson the answer?

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Firstly, it's evident that Perez is no longer the man for the job at Red Bull. While he has a few glimmers of hope in matching Verstappen on race pace, these are nothing more than vignettes that stand in contrast to the real picture of his one-lap deficit and lack of consistency versus the Dutchman.

In terms of ease of comparison, and in relation to the real situation, it's a toss-up between Lawson and Tsunoda. With Tsunoda, Red Bull gets a bit more in qualifying pace and greater consistency in terms of race pace. With Lawson, it gets a bit more peak race stint performance and perhaps a more malleable driver overall.

It depends on what the team values more, but Tsunoda just edges it in this experiment. The good thing about Lawson is, if Tsunoda was to flop, he'd be a pretty handy plug-and-play option.

And what of Colapinto? Red Bull's interest has cooled after he'd suffered a handful of crashes, but there are a few strands here that suggest that he'd still be a valuable acquisition - even if it is for the junior team, rather than the lead Red Bull outfit. Colapinto has shown a lot of potential, and rookie errors are ultimately part of the learning process and intertwined with flashes of great speed.

Instead, Red Bull's junior programme appears to be doubling down on Isack Hadjar, on whom the jury is very much out as he has yet to show much in any of his F1 practice cameos other than a quick temper. Colapinto might end up being a miss, which is good news for Williams - but when it comes to it, Red Bull might regret not pursuing the option further.

So, who should Red Bull pick for its number two seat? On qualifying pace and consistency, Tsunoda. On outright race pace: Lawson. On overall potential, Colapinto.

That's not a very satisfying conclusion, is it?

Who will take the second Red Bull seat?

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images