Liam Lawson has been informed of his Red Bull expectations by Helmut Marko (Image: Getty)
Red Bull’s is already well aware of the Austrian outfit’s sky-high expectations after his phone calls with advisor . The New Zealand native struggled in his first race since replacing as team-mate to world champion , with chief among those to .
Lawson’s weekend went from bad to worse in Melbourne. After exiting qualifying at the first phase, he began the in the pit lane thanks to changes made to his car. Yet, though it was expected he’d climb through the field in search of points, this simply didn’t happen. To make matters worse, when and most chose to pit and fit intermediates, Lawson stuck with his mediums in hopes of gaining places and paid the price for this error when crashing out on a slippery Lap 47. His previously disclosed calls with Marko from when Lawson was a teenager indicate the youngster may have to correct his lacklustre outings, should they continue.
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It’s scrutiny he’s perfectly used to. Last year, the 23-year-old opened up about phone calls he had with his team’s advisor when he was a junior that saw him threatened with the sack should he not perform well enough.
“For me, it was when I was 16 and 17 years old – my first year with ,” Lawson said on the F1 Nation podcast when asked about Marko. “Going from not being with a junior team, and just having my guys from New Zealand who had helped me get to where I was at that point, to then have Racing and have Dr Marko calling and putting the pressure on you, that was what I really struggled to deal with.
“It’s normally a 6am phone call, and it’ll be, ‘You need to perform better next weekend – if you don’t perform better, you’re in trouble’. You need to basically win races. It’s quite often if you haven’t had a good race, ‘If this continues, you won’t have a future with this team’. It’s very cut-throat. But honestly, I’m so thankful to have gone through that with Helmut.”
Lawson crashed out in Melbourne (Image: Getty)
After Lawson’s dismal first qualifying session on Sunday, Brown – whose team tasted victory Down Under with finishing P1 – piled on the pressure and threw his weight behind another on the grid who he feels perhaps should have taken Perez’s seat.
“I think it’s going to be a very exciting year,” Brown told . “Yuki [Tsunoda] did a great job, [he’s] probably the guy that should be in the if you look at how he’s performed. But they seem to make some strange driver choices.”
Japanese ace Tsunoda, who continues to front junior team and finished P12 in Australia, was another reportedly in contention when it became apparent that the Mexican driver’s time as Verstappen’s deputy was over, but his former team-mate Lawson was who Marko and Co. landed on.
The upcoming Chinese Grand Prix and sprint will be an opportunity for Lawson to bounce back and prove he’s capable of partnering with Verstappen on the grid, or risk the acknowledged wrath of Marko.