OPINION: The problem with Red Bull's driver lineup philosophy

Written by Morgan Holiday

Credit: Formula One

Red Bull’s Formula One team has been struggling with one major problem since 2019: finding a worthy teammate for Max Verstappen. They’re not any closer to solving that problem coming into the 2026 season. Why not? They keep making the same mistake.

The cycle is the same: they promote a junior driver to partner Verstappen, that driver fails to live up to their goal of finishing close to his four-time championship-winning teammate, so the team drops him and promotes a new junior driver.

The closest Red Bull came to breaking this cycle was 2021, when they signed Segio Pérez, notably not Red Bull affiliated or a junior driver at all. But at the first sign of Pérez dropping down the order, the team jumped right back into old habits. In 2025, two different Red Bull juniors partnered Verstappen and both fell short of whatever standard they were being held to. So for 2026, Yuki Tsunoda has lost his F1 seat and Isack Hadjar is being promoted to Red Bull after just one year in F1 with Visa CashApp RB (Racing Bulls), as Arvid Lindblad steps in to fill his shoes after one season in Formula 2.

This recent driver move, announced earlier this week, is not only a continuation of the same mistake Red Bull has been making for years, but will almost certainly prove detrimental to the careers of the young drivers involved.

The cycle

When Daniel Ricciardo left Red Bull for Renault at the end of 2018, the Austrian F1 team turned to the most likely place to find his replacement–their junior team. The team known at the time as Torro Rosso but now known as Racing Bulls has housed Red Bull affiliated drivers since its inception in 2006 and has operated as a proving ground for their young talent .

In 2018, the two Torro Rosso cars were piloted by Pierre Gasly and Brendon Hartley. Gasly, while younger and less experienced, performed better of the two throughout the year and was the natural choice to get the vacant Red Bull seat for 2019.

At the time, the Red Bull team was still getting its first real taste of what Verstappen was capable of, and was used to him finishing pretty close to his teammates. In fact, 2018 was the first year that Verstappen finished ahead of Ricciardo in the standings, and even then just by two places.

The future seemed bright as Gasly joined the Red Bull team, but it didn’t stay like that for long. While the Frenchman’s on-paper results weren’t bad for a driver in just his second full season of F1, his bottom of the top 10 results couldn’t hold up to the pace Verstappen was setting. 12 races into the 2019 season, Verstappen had five podiums (two being race wins), and had finished in the top five every single race. Gasly, meanwhile, boasted just two top five finishes, and had failed to score in three races.

Credit: Formula One

This performance was lacklustre enough in Red Bull’s eyes to swap him out for the driver who had replaced him at Torro Rosso: Alex Albon. The two switched places heading into the second half of the year, Gasly going back to his former team in a soul-crushing demotion.

At the time, this choice seemed to pan out well for all parties. Free of the pressure of racing for a top team, Gasly went on to score some good points at the smaller team and even achieved his maiden podium in the penultimate race of the year. Albon jumped right into things with Red Bull, finishing in the top six in eight of the nine races he contested with them that year.

Confident that they had made the right choice this time, Red Bull kept Verstappen and Albon as their driver lineup for 2020. But again, Verstappen continued closing in on the top drivers in the championship while his teammate lagged behind. The Dutchman picked up his second consecutive third place finish, grabbing 11 podiums on his way to finish close behind the dominant Mercedes drivers. Albon picked up two podiums on his way to a seventh place finish that included two podiums, almost 100 points behind his teammate.

Still looking for a Ricciardo-level teammate for Verstappen, Red Bull was displeased and dropped Albon for 2021. This time, however, they opted for one of the most experienced drivers on the grid in Pérez, who was losing his seat at BWT Racing Point but had just picked up his first race win at a midfield team.

And for the first time since 2018, Red Bull seemed to have it figured out. While the team narrowly missed out on the Constructors’ Title to Mercedes, Pérez finished fourth in the standings as Verstappen picked up his maiden F1 title, and his teammate played a crucial role in helping him take that win.

In 2022 and 2023, Red Bull was further vindicated by their choice to abandon their junior pool for the experienced Pérez as the Mexican driver finished third and second respectively while Verstappen picked up two more titles. This time, Red Bull took two comprehensive Constructors’ wins, their first since 2013.

Disaster struck in 2024, as Pérez’s performance began to flag. He started strong, taking four podiums in the first five races, but those would be his last podiums with Red Bull in F1. He dropped lower and lower in the standings, soon finishing at the bottom of the top 10 race after race before dropping out of the points altogether. By the end of the year he had only scored 152 points to Verstappen’s 437, and was down to eighth in the standings.

Even if you aren’t already familiar with this story, you won’t be surprised by what Red Bull did next, dropping Pérez from their lineup. But you might be surprised that instead of again opting for an experienced driver to partner Verstappen, they went with Liam Lawson.

Lawson, like Albon, hadn’t even completed a full season in F1 before being called up to Red Bull. Despite the fact that Tsunoda had been at the Red Bull sister team, now Racing Bulls, for four seasons without any major missteps, Red Bull was impressed by the few appearances that Lawson had made filling in for other drivers and figured he would be the right choice to jump to the defending constructors’ team.

Predictably now, Lawson struggled in his first few races. Familiar with the pattern but somehow still not ready to acknowledge the root of their mistake, Red Bull demoted Lawson to Racing Bulls after just two races (a DNF and a 12th place finish), promoting Tsunoda in his stead.

Credit: Formula One

And just like with Gasly and Albon, Lawson’s performance picked up at a midfield team while Tsunoda suffered from the pressure of being Verstappen’s teammate. 

Now the story reaches present day. With just one race left in the 2025 season, Lawson sits one place ahead of Tsunoda in the standings with five points more than the driver who replaced him at one of the top teams in the category.

Red Bull announced their 2026 driver lineup earlier this week: Hadjar will partner Verstappen at Red Bull while F2 driver Lindblad will step up to fill his place at Racing Bulls. 

Hadjar’s first season in F1 has been respectable, he sits 10th in the standings with one race still to go, well ahead of his teammate Lawson and the driver he is set to replace, Tsunoda. Will he be the driver to finally fix the curse on the second Red Bull seat? History (and common sense) says no.

The ramifications 

Calling it a “curse” may be a bit dramatic, especially considering the fact that it’s primarily self-inflicted. It’s baffling that Red Bull would continue to promote inexperienced junior drivers when it has proven time and again that no matter how well they’ve performed in the junior categories or thus far in F1, they simply can’t hold up to the standard and pressure that being Verstappen’s teammate brings.

Not only have these choices been detrimental to Red Bull’s success, they’ve also been (even more so) detrimental to the careers of their junior drivers.

The title of Red Bull junior used to be a coveted one, as it was one of the few driver academies that consistently promoted their drivers to F1, and had more seats to do so due to having their sister team as a convenient starting place.

But what good is getting promoted to F1 or even to Red Bull when you can’t keep up with your championship-winning teammate and ultimately face so much pressure from your team, the media and the public in general that you end up losing your seat?

Credit: Formula One

The closest Red Bull has gotten to a true replacement for Ricciardo was notably not a Red Bull junior, but one of the most experienced drivers in F1 at the time. As a very recently championship-winning team, Red Bull has no shortage of options. They have the power and the resources to hire nearly whomever they want. And while it would typically be considered admirable that they continue to pull from their pool of young talent, in this case it hasn’t proven helpful for any party involved.

Hadjar has clearly done well in both his junior career and F1 so far. But would it be fair to call him a better driver than any of the Red Bull juniors who came before him? If not, why does Red Bull believe that this time will be any different?

Red Bull seems to be ignoring two rather obvious truths: one, that young and inexperienced drivers usually need time to get up to speed, especially in relation to a driver clearly headed for all-time great status like Verstappen. Two, that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the way we often describe the term “insanity”.

They can’t have it both ways. If the team is going to continue to promote young talent (again, an admirable cause) they need to manage their expectations and give them time to develop instead of crushing their morale with the pressure of knowing they could be knocked down to the junior team after as few as two races to prove themselves. If they don’t have the patience that hiring young drivers requires, they need to make the choice to hire outside of their junior talent pool and opt for an older, more experienced driver. Otherwise, both the team and the young, clearly talented drivers they continue to reject from the team will continue to suffer the consequences.