The 20-year-old lesson Red Bull still hasn't been able to learn

That Red Bull celebrated its 20th anniversary as a Formula 1 team this year should have been a time for reflection and introspection; a chance to recognise its many successes and note its flaws. It's come a long way since its 2005 debut, and the subsequent growing pains it endured as it finally shook off the corporate staidness left over by Ford's ownership as Jaguar.

Red Bull Racing is now a multiple championship-winning team, having enjoyed two separate stretches delivering four-time title winners with Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen. Although the indications from the start of 2025 are that it might be facing a bit of a comedown as its RB21 appears to have its flaws, the team is unrecognisable from its early days...

...or so we thought. When it comes to the crunch, there's one key area where it appears to have made little progress: ensuring a competitive environment for the driver in its second seat, and handling the driver within. Even in the days where both drivers were genuinely winning races, Red Bull struggled to avoid scratching its itchy trigger finger or upsetting the balance with the perception of preferential treatment. The only times the team has had two drivers operating at the same level was when it had an Australian on the books - perhaps that's why it has been suggested previously that it is keen to prise Oscar Piastri from his McLaren employ.

Having plumped for his fellow Antipodean racer in Liam Lawson, Red Bull presumably believed that his hard-headedness in battle - which boiled over in Mexico last year in his duel with home demi-deity Sergio Perez - would be perfect for the rigours of driving for Red Bull. But defiance alone cannot arrest the situation he currently finds himself in. The salient fact is this: he, at the moment, cannot find the requisite time from the RB21 to break out of Q1. The only way he can learn to do so is with time behind the wheel, but Red Bull is not at all guaranteed to give him that time.

Whether Yuki Tsunoda is the solution to Red Bull's question of "is it the car, or the driver?" remains unknown, although it's not unlikely that we could have the answer before the season is out. Perhaps, given Tsunoda's frustration that he was overlooked in favour of Lawson, not being in the RB21 is a blessing in disguise. Equally, maybe his more explosive driving style might be better equipped to deal with it. We just don't know - at least, not yet.

The idea that a swap is being floated already is reminiscent of the situation Red Bull put itself in for its maiden season in 2005. Even then, the views of Helmut Marko diverged from the then-management of Jaguar carry-over Tony Purnell; Marko wanted to use both seats for talents he had nurtured in Christian Klien and Vitantonio Liuzzi, while Purnell - who was soon ousted in favour of Christian Horner - wanted experience on board for the team's first season. Thus, David Coulthard was signed as lead driver, and Klien and Liuzzi were thus subject to Marko's suggestion that the two rotate every four races.

Two number twos? Red Bull has done it before back in 2005 with Klien and Liuzzi

Photo by: Red Bull Racing

Klien, with a year under his belt having raced for Jaguar in 2004, took the drive for the opening three races of the championship. Liuzzi, the reigning F3000 champion, was pencilled in for the fourth round at Imola. Although with today's eyes, it might be viewed that Liuzzi would be shoehorned into the line-up with little track time, the Italian could at least benefit from testing time and Friday free practice sessions - back in the days when a third car was allowed. To lend further credence to a swap later in the season, Liuzzi topped the first practice session of the season-opening Melbourne weekend, but then suffered a spin in the second.

But as Red Bull impressed in the early part of the season by bloodying the noses of its more established midfield counterparts, Klien bagged points in the opening two races in Australia and Malaysia - outqualifying Coulthard in the latter, and then did the same in Bahrain before his race was waved off before the start with an electrical issue. Despite the Austrian's impressive start to '05, Red Bull stuck to its guns and swapped in Liuzzi for the San Marino round.

"It's like having Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen in the same team," Horner mused at the time, evidently blissfully unaware that the Rooney/Owen combination had been a commendable force in the England international line-up of the time - at least, until both sustained continued issues with injury.

Red Bull's problem of not having enough seats for its younger drivers led to its acquisition of Minardi as a training ground for its younger talents before the 2006 season

Horner's metaphor continued: "Christian and Tonio are both great talents and you want to have both of them on the field, so to speak, but you have to pick one of them. So one of them has to sit on the bench."

Klien could feel hard done-by, although Liuzzi had quite a lot of buzz about him at the time. Here was Italy's next hope, with a karting and junior series record that suggested he could carry the torch for Italy over long-term stalwarts Giancarlo Fisichella and Jarno Trulli. In the 28 April 2005 edition of Autosport, Liuzzi's full debut was described as "patchy" and sustained a Tamburello lock-up in qualifying that led to him starting 15th for his home race, and finished 11th on the road in a somewhat low-key maiden outing. Yet, that result was upgraded in the weeks following to eighth - and a point - as Ralf Schumacher was given a 25-second penalty and the two BARs were disqualified for using fuel as ballast in a secret tank.

Liuzzi then spun off early on in the following Spanish Grand Prix, then took too much out of his tyres at Monaco and hit the barrier. He was given one more run at the European Grand Prix's Nurburgring race, with a promising qualifying lap undone by a lock-up at the chicane and ultimately finished ninth - half a second behind the eighth-placed Trulli. The seat returned to Klien afterwards, who endured a difficult weekend back in the cockpit at Montreal and yet came up for air with a point.

Klien won the shootout but it wasn't to be a fruitful partnership with Red Bull

Photo by: Red Bull Racing

The seat-swap experiment was over, and Klien had it for the rest of the year. Red Bull couldn't preserve its early season momentum and points finishes were harder to come by as the likes of BAR had stepped up its game, although Klien impressed in the China finale with fifth - earning himself a reprieve for 2006.

Red Bull's problem of not having enough seats for its younger drivers led to its acquisition of Minardi as a training ground for its younger talents before the 2006 season. Liuzzi had been deemed not ready to take on the demands of racing for Red Bull, even with less pressure given its midfield status, and signed to lead the new Toro Rosso team to join the American driver Scott Speed. Yet, both were overlooked when Klien was dumped by Red Bull with three rounds to go in 2006, and Robert Doornbos was plugged in as his replacement. Years later, Klien told the Beyond the Grid podcast that this was in response to him turning down a Red Bull-backed IndyCar drive for 2007 following the news that he would not be retained for a third season.

There's been a continued problem at Red Bull in keeping both drivers happy. In its late 2000s/early 2010s pomp, Mark Webber was continually at odds with the team's management - but somehow managed to compartmentalise those slights and chase wins on-track. Vettel then wanted out when the team regressed in 2014, before Red Bull struggled to keep Daniel Ricciardo satisfied when Verstappen joined the scene. His replacements in Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon were unable to match Verstappen in a car that was suited to his sensibilities, and Perez initially appeared to be a stable force in the second seat until his mid-2023 crisis of confidence struck as the Red Bull set-up decided to pull the car away from the neutral handling characteristics that he'd been working with.

With Perez gone, Lawson is going through an accelerated version of the same scenario. Perhaps, viewing 2005 under 2025's lens, Tsunoda will struggle just as much as his former team-mate has - and without the benefit of any testing behind the wheel of the RB21.

So, what's the fix? There are two options on the table: one being in focusing its 2025 developments on settling the rear end of the car and ensuring that it's less dicey to drive. The other? Simply to stop kidding itself that it views the second car as anything but an inconvenience - because history shows that, to Red Bull, it generally is.

At the present time, it probably doesn't matter who Horner throws into the car - Tsunoda, Isack Hadjar, Arvid Lindblad, or even one of the people in the catering department - it'll likely still be nowhere near Verstappen. It's had 20 years to learn a lesson in how to balance a two-car set-up, and recent events show that it's still nowhere near passing that particular test.

Will Red Bull stick or twist with Lawson?

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images