Who should Racing Bulls sign? Lawson, Lindblad and Tsolov’s cases for the seats
On Lap 1 at Interlagos, a Racing Bulls car was running second, ahead of Lando Norris. The driver in it, Liam Lawson, still does not know whether he has a seat for next season.
Racing Bulls is the only team on the grid yet to announce a single driver for 2027. Team principal Alan Permane has three names in contention for two cars: Lawson, rookie Arvid Lindblad and Red Bull junior Nikola Tsolov.
Lawson and Lindblad are doing the job right now. Tsolov is the reason anyone is asking whether they should keep it. This is the case for and against each of the pair, and the part the Bulgarian plays in the decision.
The case for Lawson
Brazil is the best place to start. Lawson qualified fifth, started third once penalties for others were applied and passed Norris on the opening lap to run second behind Kimi Antonelli.
Graining intermediates dragged him back through the order, but he still finished seventh after Charles Leclerc was penalised for their late contact.
The season surrounding the weekend is just as solid. Lawson is ninth in the standings on 89 points, the best of all drivers outside the top four teams, and has scored in all but four races. Fourteen of those points came from three weekends in a Red Bull, when he stood in for an injured Isack Hadjar.
Lawson is also the main reason Racing Bulls is on course for fifth in the constructors’ championship, which would be the team’s best finish in Formula One. That position brings prize money as well as prestige, so a driver who delivers it has a commercial argument alongside the sporting one.
Then there is the personal arc. Red Bull sent him back to Racing Bulls after two races in 2025, and Hadjar outperformed him comfortably that year. Yet he has returned as a steadier, sharper driver. “I don’t know what else they want me to do,” he said ahead of the São Paulo Grand Prix.
The case against Lawson
The weakness in his year is qualifying. At the summer break, he led his rookie teammate only 6-5 in Grand Prix qualifying, and Lindblad had reached Q3 seven times to Lawson’s five. Lawson would have wanted to settle that argument, after Hadjar dominated him in 2025.
The larger problem is context rather than form. Lawson has already had his chance with the senior team and, for now, does not look like a candidate for another. Permane has been open that Racing Bulls is not there only to compete, and that it also exists to bring young talent through. A 24-year-old who has been through that system once is the obvious name to lose out when a younger option arrives.
Permane has also said the team needs some experience to measure its young drivers against. That works in Lawson’s favour, though it casts him as a yardstick rather than a long-term piece.
The case for Lindblad
Lindblad is the only rookie on the grid and has been competitive from his first race. He scored points on debut in Australia, finishing eighth while racing Lewis Hamilton, and has 11 points finishes this season. That includes eighth at Monza and 10th in Malaysia after starting from the back of the grid, his fourth points finish in a row.
His case rests on timing. Permane has described both drivers as performing excellently, and he has conceded that drivers in the Red Bull programme have sometimes lacked time to settle and that snap decisions may have been made.
That is why he is promising “a little bit of science” this time. Dropping a rookie after one season would be hard to square with it.
At 19, Lindblad is also the one with the longest runway ahead of him.
The case against Lindblad
The raw numbers are modest next to Lawson’s. Lindblad is 11th in the standings and was 45 points behind his teammate before Brazil. Strip out the 14 Lawson scored for Red Bull and that gap is closer to 30, but Lawson has still led the head-to-head for most of the year.
Sundays have been the sticking point. Early in the season, he qualified close to Lawson but struggled to follow him through the field and into the points. Every rookie has weekends like that.
Racing Bulls has to decide whether it wants to wait for them to stop.
Where Tsolov fits in
Tsolov is 19, from Sofia, and in his first F2 season with Campos. He has won six races, including the Melbourne and Monaco feature races as well as both Silverstone races. He is second in the championship, seven points behind Rafael Câmara with Qatar and Abu Dhabi to come.
He made his F1 practice debut in first practice at Mexico City on 30th October and finished within a tenth of Lindblad.
His role is less about merit than about pressure and timing. Red Bull’s senior seats are settled, with Hadjar retained alongside Max Verstappen for 2027, so Racing Bulls is the only door open.
Helmut Marko has said the team should favour Tsolov over Lawson, and a title would sharpen the problem, because an F2 champion would be ineligible to return to the category in 2027.
That does not make Tsolov a verdict on Lawson or Lindblad. It makes him a verdict on what Racing Bulls wants to be. If the team is purely a development arm for Red Bull, promoting its best junior is the logical move. If it wants to protect a best-ever constructors’ result, it keeps the two drivers who produced it. Jenson Button has already backed Lawson as the safer route to points.
There is also a middle option, and Permane keeps leaving it open. Tsolov could spend a year racing elsewhere while collecting F1 running with Red Bull and Racing Bulls ahead of a 2028 promotion. Red Bull has a history of burning promising juniors by promoting them too soon, and a year’s delay means the team wouldn’t be rushing a debut.
Reports are pulling in different directions. On 5 November, Lindblad appeared to suggest on Instagram that Tsolov would be his teammate, then edited the caption of the post. Since then, further reports say Lawson is on course to keep his seat alongside Lindblad, although Red Bull’s shareholders are yet to make a final decision.
On merit, Lawson and Lindblad have both earned another year. Lawson has delivered the results and Lindblad has delivered the promise, and together they have put Racing Bulls on course for its strongest season in F1.
Tsolov’s rise does not undo any of that. It only asks whether the team will back what it has built or what it was built to produce.
An announcement is expected in the coming weeks, possibly before the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Whatever Racing Bulls decides, it will show the paddock which of those two things it values more.
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