Is Lawson’s career on a knife edge

The Red Bull axe fell on F1 driver Pierre Gasly this week as he was demoted from Aston Martin Red Bull Racing back down to Scuderia Toro Rosso.

The next head on the Red Bull chopping block is his replacement Alexander Albon, who steps up from Toro Rosso to the Red Bull team after just 12 Formula One races under his belt.

Kiwi driver Liam Lawson is currently in the Red Bull Junior driver program carving out a promising future and hoping to get into Formula One, albeit with Red Bull. But is his pathway to Formula One, one that will always be on the ‘Red Bull’ knife edge?

Clearly it is a culture that has a ‘perform or you die’ team environment. But it is a system that is prepared to pay for and provide the necessary imputs to get a driver through their junior program. All the driver has to do is perform on track.

“If you’re not winning in a category straight away, then you’re not the right guy,” says Helmut Marko, Red Bull’s motorsport advisor and chief of the junior program.

So Lawson has proved that he is a winner. Having won the NZ Formula F1600 Championship, he finished runner up in the ADAC German Formula 4 Championship last season. He went on to win the 2019 Toyota Racing Series (TRS) and now is competing in the Euroformula Open and FIA Formula 3 Championships. Red Bull’s involvement with Lawson started this year after the TRS campaign.

He, and his management team, will be aware of the need (and pressure) to perform. Red Bull have the history of cutting poor performing drivers at all levels of racing. Lawson will not be an exception.

But as Marko says it is not all bad for those drivers that get the chop.

“We got a lot of criticism about [cutting drivers], which I would say is not fair because most of these drivers – 90% or more – are in other categories,” says Marko. “Looking at the Spa 24 Hours or in DTM or LMP1 or Formula E. They all make [a living] out of it. What more can you expect from your life?”

He’s got a point there that is hard to argue with.