Red Bull’s motorsport advisor, Helmut Marko, recently revealed his conversations with shareholders regarding the second seat in RB.
During the 2024 Canadian Grand Prix, RB announced they had prolonged Yuki Tsunoda’s contract following his amazing start to the season—five point-finishes in the first eight races.
With that, there only remains one seat in the Italy-based team, which has two main contenders: the 34-year-old experienced Daniel Ricciardo and the 22-year-old up-and-coming Liam Lawson.
Christian Horner’s latest update issued two months ago asserted that RB’s current drivers were and would be the priority.
If Ricciardo got the second seat in RB, Lawson would be free to search for a seat elsewhere, but with a much lower chance of getting it as teams tend to prefer young drivers from their own academies.
The 22-year-old’s chances of getting a seat in F1 for 2025 started looking increasingly lower throughout the last two months. However, Helmut Marko’s recent statement changes everything.
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Red Bull’s motorsport advisor revealed to Kleine Zeitung that shareholders demand junior drivers in the seat of VCARB. He said:
“The shareholders have made it known that it is a junior team, and we have to act accordingly.”
The 81-year-old also revealed the initial plan. When RB signed Daniel Ricciardo, they expected to see exceptional performances from him in order to promote him to Red Bull Racing.
However, the 34-year-old has struggled for most of the 2024 season and has been outperformed by his Japanese teammate on most occasions.
Now that Sergio Perez has a seat in Red Bull for 2025 and possibly 2026, that door has been closed for the Australian driver. His only chance now seems to be to sign an extension with RB.
“The goal was that he would be considered for Red Bull Racing with exceptional performances. That seat now belongs to Sergio Perez, so that plan is no longer valid.”
The problem for Ricciardo would be that there seems to be huge pressure on putting a young driver in RB. Marko added: “We have to put a young driver in there soon. That would be Liam Lawson.”
