Did Lawson boost his chance of Red Bull F1 seat in fierce battle with Perez?

As Perez tried to make his way through they tangled in the Turn 4/5 complex, with the local hero receiving floor and sidepod damage that immediately cost him performance.

Both blamed each other of course, and in the aftermath both cursed on team radio, with Perez branding the rookie “an idiot.” Later in the race when Lawson passed by he gave the veteran a middle finger, a gesture that was caught by his onboard camera, and immediately broadcast to the world at large. You couldn’t make it up…

Perez tumbled out of the points and finished 17th, while having survived a later tangle with fellow rookie Franco Colapinto (who was blamed by the stewards) Lawson finished 16th. Not good news for RB on a day when Yuki Tsunoda crashed at the first corner, and close rival Haas logged seven priceless points.

There was a big picture too at Red Bull. With the penalised Verstappen finishing only sixth the team needed a decent score from its second driver. Instead it slipped to third in the constructors’ championship, behind Ferrari.

“He has to have the right attitude to say, ‘I’m overdoing it a little bit, I will step back, and start again.’

“It’s all the learning you have to do as a youngster, because if you don’t learn from your mistakes, F1 is a brutal world out there, and he might not continue…”

It was hard not to conclude that Perez was feeling the pressure of Lawson’s ominous presence in the Red Bull camp, and that he would perhaps not have been quite so passionate had he got into a scrape with F1’s other recent rookie Colapinto.

Lawson meanwhile realised after the flag that he needed to rein things in a little, especially with regard to his hand gesture.

“Yeah, it’s obviously one of those in-the-moment things that he spent half the lap blocking me, trying to ruin my race,” he said. “So I was upset, but it’s not an excuse. I shouldn’t have done it, and I apologise for that.”

The finger was not the issue for the Red Bull management – the damage sustained to Perez’s RB20, and the loss of priceless points, was what mattered. The sister cars are not supposed to bang into each other.

“Well, first of all, I think it demonstrates that you can see that the two teams do race each other,” said Christian Horner when Motor Sport asked him about the clash. “And whilst having the same ownership, are independent as to the way that they go racing.

“Liam has obviously apologised, I think, to Checo for the incident. And obviously there’ll be lessons that come out of that. But frustrating certainly for Checo’s race to pick up the damage, and lose valuable points today.”

Horner chose his words carefully. A little later Lawson was called to see him at RBR hospitality, where he was apparently given a telling off and reminded how costly the loss of points was.

The whole saga will make for a great storyline in Drive to Survive come February, and meanwhile we wait to see what happens next.

Perez has been skating on thin ice for several months. Within the current limitations of the car he has been given every opportunity to turn things around and get the sort of results that he showed he was capable of getting as recently as the first quarter of the season, when he logged four podium finishes in six races.

However he has scored only 47 points in the subsequent 14 races, with a best result of sixth at Zandvoort during that period.

The underlying issue is that since the start of the year other teams have become more competitive, and the RB20 has become increasingly tricky to drive.

However while Verstappen has been able to perform miracles by wringing its neck and getting good enough results to keep his drivers’ title campaign on track, Perez hasn’t been able to deal with it. After Sunday’s race Horner’s position was pretty clear.

“Checo again has had a horrible weekend, and nothing’s gone right for him this weekend,” he said. “He knows F1 is a results-based business, and inevitably, when you’re not delivering, then the spotlight is firmly on you.

“When anyone is underperforming, of course, there is always going to become scrutiny on that. And as a team, we need to have both cars scoring points, and that’s the nature of F1. So from a team’s perspective, we’re working with him as hard as we can, to try and support him.

“I think we’ve done everything that we can to support Checo, and we’ll continue to do so in Brazil next weekend. But there comes a point in time that you can only do so much…”

Asked if Perez will finish the 2024 season Horner hardly offered a ringing endorsement.

“Look, as I just said, that scrutiny is always going to be there. And there comes a point in time that difficult decisions have to be made.

“We’re now third in the constructors’ championship. Our determination is to try and get back into a winning position, but it’s going to be a tall order over these next four races.”

We can assume that the consensus in the camp now is that despite his limited F1 mileage Lawson will be able to do a better job than Perez in 2025, with the experience gained in his five races in 2023 and six this season seen as enough to slot him in as Verstappen’s team-mate.

He seems also to have put pressure on Tsunoda, who spun in the US GP and crashed in both Q2 and the race in Mexico last weekend. That did the slim chance he had of ever making it to an RBR seat no good at all.

Helmut Marko made a few withering comments about the Honda protege, and you can imagine that the Red Bull viewpoint is if that if Yuki is put off-kilter by Lawson, what would happen if we put him alongside Max?

The problem that RBR has in making a change in Lawson’s favour is that Perez has a contract for 2025-’26. It was announced back in June, when following those early season podiums, his stock was still high.

So why did the team move so early when, for example, Carlos Sainz was on the market?

In the wake of the off-track Horner controversy there was some uncertainty in the camp. Adrian Newey’s departure had become known, and there were question marks over Verstappen’s longer-term intentions. Keeping Perez on board provided some continuity, and also kept his team-mate happy.

It’s understood that while his initial Red Bull deal, signed at the end of 2020 after he’d been dropped from Racing Point/Aston Martin by Lawrence Stroll, had some performance clauses, his current arrangement does not. And nor indeed does the two-year extension.

Thus turfing Perez out now won’t be entirely straightforward, and it might not be as easy as paying him not to drive for the two years of his new contract. Aside from his salary if he’s not racing he would have issues with compromised personal sponsorship deals, and so on.

Intriguingly he is looked after by Julian Jakobi, the man who famously managed both Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost in their McLaren days, and who probably knows more about F1 driver contracts than anyone else on the planet.

So what of Lawson? After a year on the sidelines since his initial outings he has certainly made an impression in the past couple of weekends.

Upsetting veteran drivers in something of a rite of passage for future greats, and you could argue that other than damaging Perez’s car, he has been doing everything right.

He’s fast, he’s certainly not short of self-confidence, he’s not awed by the reputations of anyone on the grid, and he’s willing to get his elbows out and get into fights.

In other words these two races have demonstrated that he has all the qualities that Horner and Marko require in someone who just might survive being throw in against Verstappen as soon as 2025, despite having just 11 starts to his name at the end of this year.

That in turn will leave a vacant seat at RB, with F2 start Isack Hadjar the obvious guy in line, and Franco Colapinto the possible joker in the pack, should Red Bull be willing to buy him from Williams.

It’s going to be intriguing to see how it all plays out…