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Horner explains Lawson over Tsunoda: 'In that, he was slightly better'
Christian Horner has said that he believes Liam Lawson's performances in 2024 "were slightly better" than that of teammate Yuki Tsunoda, which ultimately led to the New Zealander being the replacement for Sergio Perez at Red Bull. Tsunoda has been a part of the Red Bull Racing family for a while, and he has had much more experience in F1 than Lawson, but the Austrian team decided to go with the 22-year-old from New Zealand, a decision that team principal Christian Horner said was "very tight."
Horner explains choice of Lawson
"It was very, very tight between the two of them. I mean, Yuki is a very fast driver. He's got three or four seasons of experience now. He did a very good job in the tyre test for us in Abu Dhabi where the engineers were impressed with how he performed," he told ESPN.
"But we just felt with Liam, when you look and go into the analytics of his race, the pace was slightly better in the races that he did. His qualifying pace was very tight with Yuki, and you've got to assume that the potential with Liam having only done 11 grand prix, is he's only going to get better and stronger. He's shown real mental resilience and toughness," continued the 51-year-old Briton.
"The engineers have enjoyed working with him through the running that he's done this year. He's got a good work ethic as well. So it is great to have Yuki still involved with the Racing Bull scene next year. And of course, he's on standby should he ever be required," Horner added.
Red Bull has learned from dealing with Perez
According to the Red Bull boss, the Austrian F1 team has learned from dealing with underperforming Sergio Perez. Unlike Perez and his predecessors at Red Bull, the team does not want to put too much pressure on Lawson right away: "I think the key thing is not to put too much pressure on him and not to put too much pressure on himself that he's going out against the best driver of his generation," Horner continued.
"I think that he just needs to almost ignore the data of what's going on on Car 1 and just focus on his own engineering team, what he's doing, and just do the best job that he can and he'll be fine. And hopefully, we can support him in that. Hopefully, we'll be able to provide a car that suits him as well as Max next year, and we'll see how he goes.," concluded the Red Bull team boss.
This article was created in collaboration with Nicole Mulder
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