Red Bull Engineer says Lawson was "a Round Peg in a Square Hole" at Red Bull

Nelson Espinal | Apr 4, 2025

May 4, 2024; Miami Gardens, Florida, USA; Crewmembers work on the Red Bull Racing driver Max Verstappen (1) car in the paddock before the F1 Sprint Race at Miami International Autodrome. Mandatory Credit: John David Mercer-Imagn Images / John David Mercer-Imagn Images

Red Bull Racing's Chief Engineer, Paul Monaghan, spoke to reporters about the state of the RB-21 and how the technical team views the driver swap of Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson.

After only 2 races, Red Bull demoted Liam Lawson down to their junior team, Visa Cash App Racing Bulls, and promoted Yuki Tsunoda to the senior team in a shock move.

Even by Red Bull's drastic standards, many pegged the team to give Lawson more than 2 races to settle in, but the higher-ups had seemingly seen enough.

Monaghan said he feels for what happened to Lawson.

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"Poor Liam, perhaps it was a round peg in a square hole and it just didn't work for us," he told the media.

"So what's done is done as far as I'm concerned."

"We'll support Yuki as best we can, support Liam as best we can, support Max and don't forget in terms of a Constructors' Championship, it's in our interest to get the best out of both cars."

"So whatever lessons we can take from the first two, from either car, we will take and we'll put on here and it doesn't matter who drives it."

"It's our car, our pride, it's our championship."

With Lawson heading back to Racing Bulls, many believe that he is headed to a more drivable car compared to the RB-21, which seemingly only Max Verstappen can get performance out of

Monaghan disagrees that the RB-21 is more challenging to drive than most of the cars on the grid.

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"I bet there are 18 other twitchy cars in this pit lane that all of us, myself probably the most, would find really quite difficult to drive," he said.

"Now, last year's one had some flaws and we've addressed those flaws quite significantly and quite well without giving away much lap time in my opinion."

"Now we've got to try and get this one to be a little bit better and if we're two tenths off in a 5.5k circuit with 20-something corners, if we find a few hundredths in each corner, all of a sudden we're on the pace of the current lead car."

"So I think it's easy to overstate that we've got a difficult car to drive, I bet they're all quite difficult."

"Now we've just got to try and get a little bit more speed out of this one, try and improve its stability to the point that the drivers find it easier to drive and if we can do that and put some lap time on to it, all well and good, we'll be in the hunt."

"But don't forget there's 22 races to go, so yeah, we can do that."