Racing Bulls' 2025 Line-Up Dilemma: Lawson's Uncertain Future
Alan Permane is in no hurry. Liam Lawson doesn’t have that luxury.
At Sao Paulo, the Racing Bulls team principal laid out a calm, almost clinical vision for the team’s 2025 line-up, while one of the season’s standout performers waits, and waits, with no Plan B and the grid closing around him.
Racing Bulls slow the trigger
Permane made it clear: this is not the old Red Bull junior conveyor belt. Not anymore.
“Red Bull’s had a very successful young driver program,” he said, before pointedly noting that, from the outside at least, some youngsters had not been given enough time to settle and “maybe some snap decisions have been made.”
That is the backdrop to Racing Bulls’ current stand-off with time. Both seats remain unconfirmed for next year. The team boss insists that is deliberate, not indecisive.
“We’re trying to apply a little bit of science, and that takes some time,” he explained. “We’re not in a rush to do anything, and I’m very confident the right decision will be made.”
He has said that before. Ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix, Permane spoke of a decision coming “in the coming weeks.” A month later, in Brazil, the same phrase returned. Still no signatures. Still no clarity.
Permane acknowledged the frustration on all sides — Lawson, Arvid Lindblad, the paddock — but he is adamant the timeline belongs to the team, not the drivers.
“I realise it’s frustrating for our drivers. I realise it’s frustrating for everyone else, but we want to get it right, and we will get it right,” he said. “I’m sure when we announce it in the coming weeks, everyone will be happy.”
A balancing act: youth vs experience
Beneath the delay lies a familiar tension inside the Red Bull ecosystem: development versus results.
“The main factors are, as always, pace and speed. That’s what comes into it. That’s the very first thing we look for,” Permane said. But Racing Bulls, he reminded everyone, is not just another midfield outfit chasing points.
“We are here to bring young talent through, so we have to keep an eye on that. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that we just keep churning young talent through the car.”
He stressed the need for experience alongside youth, to benchmark the next generation properly. That complicates the picture — especially with Formula 2 contender Nikola Tsolov also in the frame.
“We need to have maybe some experience as well to measure that talent again. So, it’s not an easy decision,” he admitted. Discussions, he said, are close to completion. No combinations ruled out. No firm date offered.
“We’re getting there, and it won’t be long.”
For the man currently delivering on track, it already feels too long.
Lawson’s breakout – and his brick wall
Lawson is ninth in the drivers’ standings, sitting on 83 points. He is the leading driver outside the big four teams. Over the four races before Brazil, he scored 26 points and dragged Racing Bulls towards a lucrative fifth place in the constructors’ championship.
From the outside, it looks like a textbook case for a contract extension. From Lawson’s seat, it looks like a test of patience he never signed up for.
“I don’t know what else they want me to do,” he told F1 TV before the Brazilian weekend. The line hung in the air like a challenge and a plea all at once.
The calendar offers him little comfort.
“I mean it’s tough isn’t it? It’s the end of the season,” he said. “When something like this is pushed all the way to the end, you’re left with not really any options.”
No Plan B. No parallel talks. Just a career hanging on a decision that keeps being pushed into that vague, shifting space called “the coming weeks.”
Paddock sympathy, Red Bull reality
The paddock has noticed. Sky Sports F1 analyst Bernie Collins highlighted Lawson’s central role in Racing Bulls’ push to fifth in the constructors’ race and suggested his on-track case is already strong enough.
“We don’t know what happens in the engineer meetings or what goes on in the background, but definitely from our point of view he appears to have done enough,” Collins said.
Naomi Schiff went a step further, arguing that the Red Bull structure itself may be working against him.
“If they managed themselves as their own completely separate entity with their own mission, then maybe he would have done enough,” she said. “But unfortunately that’s just not the setup they have there.”
Racing Bulls do not exist in isolation. Every decision in Faenza is ultimately filtered through what it means for Milton Keynes. Lawson is not just fighting for a seat — he is fighting for a place in a long-term Red Bull jigsaw that extends far beyond 2025.
The Mexico flashpoint
Into that already fraught context came Mexico City.
Lawson collided with Max Verstappen during practice, both drivers picking up penalties. Lawson apologised. Verstappen, in public, questioned his former teammate’s judgement and made pointed reference to the New Zealander’s uncertain future.
The incident sparked an uncomfortable question: could one practice clash with the triple world champion actually count against Lawson in the boardroom?
For Martin Brundle, the idea is absurd.
“If he dared be on the racetrack on a preparation lap like Max at the same moment, if that’s a factor in him getting the heave ho, that’s pathetic,” the Sky Sports F1 commentator said. “That’s so childish. I can’t believe it is.”
Brundle then dipped into his own history, recalling how he lost his Benetton seat after starting to beat Michael Schumacher.
“It happens in this business for any number of reasons,” he said. “Sometimes commercial reasons, political future, and the teams are thinking a long way ahead and all the pieces of the jigsaw fit together in a way that don’t always look obvious to us standing here talking about it right now.
“But I think Liam’s done a tremendous job for them.”
It was a pointed reminder: performance is only one part of the equation. The rest lives in meeting rooms and long-term strategies, far from the stopwatch.
Time running one way
For Permane, there is security. His own contract at Racing Bulls runs until 2031. He can afford to talk about science, long-term planning and the right mix of youth and experience.
For Lawson, every session feels like an audition with no clear script.
He responded in Sao Paulo with a solid if unspectacular Friday: 10th in first practice, 13th in the second. More evidence, if anyone needs it, that he belongs at this level. More data points for a decision that still hasn’t landed.
Permane insists “time is on our side.” For the team, maybe it is.
For the driver who says he has nowhere else to go, the clock is ticking in only one direction.
