Montoya: No surprise Red Bull chose Lawson but Tsunoda deserved it

Ex-F1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya is among those questioning the wisdom of catapulting a driver with 11 Grand Prix starts with VCARB, aka Lawson, who got the nod to be Max Verstappen's teammate in 2025, at the expense of Tsunoda with his 87 GP starts for the Red Bull junior team.

In the wake of the firing of Sergio Perez and the confirmation of Lawson by Red Bull, Montoya said, “I am not surprised Liam Lawson has got it. But the person I think deserved it was Yuki." Which incidentally echoes fellow ex-F1 driver, Johnny Herbert's sentiments on the matter.

However, for Montoya, the Perez-Lawson affair is a sideshow to the greater problem Red Bull is facing in the post-Adrian Newey era for the team. They need to keep the best driver on the grid happy, and as long as he is winning races and titles as Verstappen has in the past four years, that will continue.

For 2026, Red Bull enters uncharted waters for the first time. Without the Aston Martin-bound design genius responsible for building the cars that won all their titles, can the team convince Verstappen to see out his deal until the end of the 2028 F1 season?

Or will the Dutch ace walk out even before then, at the end of 2026, for instance, when the pecking order of the next generation F1 cars will be redetermined? Montoya warned, “If I were Max, I would be pretty concerned about the engine program for 2026.

"People think he might go to Mercedes but for me there’s a better chance he would end up at Aston Martin. You have Newey and Honda, which was the combination that’s been at Red Bull. And Lawrence doesn’t take ’No’ for an answer. If Lawrence wants you, he’ll do whatever it takes to get you. He has enough to offer him for Max to think, That's awesome," predicts Montoya.

One could argue that if Red Bull had the 'real' Checo Perez in the sister car, not only would Verstappen have won his fourth title as he did, but the 2024 F1 Constructors' title was theirs to win, but they lost it to McLaren and were eventually P3 behind Ferrari.

Stats can be cruel and rude; reading them shows that if Perez had scored 285 points for his team (as he did for them in 2023), they would have easily won this year's Constructors' championship, but the meagre 152 points to Verstappen's 437 cost them that honour.

Montoya continued: “Red Bull is the team that has the most work to do this winter. If they are not careful, regardless of who is driving, they will be fourth or even fifth. At the end of this season, Ferrari, McLaren, and Mercedes had better cars.

"There are a lot of mid-players who hadn’t been considered who are now building really good cars. Everybody is finding their feet with the rules. Red Bull dominated with those rules but are now the ones who are fumbling the ball at the end," reckons Montoya. (