The Red Bull is a dog with fleas. If Verstappen wasn't there you could slap some green stickers on it, call it a Sauber, and no one would really notice. I think if you offered to grab the RB's late one night and paint them in the Red Bull livery for the rest of the season, Lawson and Verstappen would both bite your hand off. That car has the same PU so it's fast, and it has a much better aero solution it seems. And, Verstappen wants to win his fifth WDC. I don't think he stands a chance of that in the RB21.

Thought it was decent of Verstappen to stand up for Lawson in his recent comments to the media. He's as much as said the 2025 car isn't up to it despite feeling comfortable in it. It's as bad as any team on the grid with the tire deg, and it's slow due to lack of grip. The optimal operating window is as small as last year even if the balance has been improved. Something has to give, I don't see how Wache holds onto his job, the car has gone nowhere since he took over leadership of the design team after Newey was moved along.

I hope Lawson can make up some places during the race this afternoon but that's looking like an enormous task once you get much above P15 on the grid. He will know what his contract KPI's are so he will know exactly how many race weekends he has to try and turn the ship around. Fortunately he has raced at Suzuka in F1 and in Super Formula. The SF teams are based at the track I think, and he had that epic battle with Tsunoda in 2023 when they raced side by side off the line through a few corners before Lawson got ahead of him. I think if he can't get some positive performance going there then it's really not looking good for him and we will see the real commitment Red Bull has to their statements of giving Lawson time.

Red Bull's bigger problem is that car though, Verstappen is going to get sick of driving it at 11/10ths with no realistic chance of victory unless all of Norris, Piastri, Leclerc, Hamilton, Russell and Antonelli have a bad weekend first.