Liam Lawson gets little support from Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen, who suggests a return to the Racing Bulls.

With RB bosses meeting this week to discuss the New Zealander's future (or not) with the team, his Dutch teammate offered little comfort.

"If you look at the difference between the two drivers at the other teams, they are all closer together," said the four-time world champion.

"It also shows that our car is extremely tough," he added.

"I think if you put Liam in the Racing Bulls car, he will go faster. I really think so. That car is easier to drive than ours."

Easier to drive because it was created for Max is the fact of the matter, almost all of his previous teammates having suffered similar struggles.

However, while Lawson insists he needs time, Christian Horner admits that the team needs both drivers scoring points.

All the mess of the Horner saga aside, the Austrian team is clearly hurting. It has lost a number of high profile personnel to rivals and its car is still outclassed by at least two, possibly three, other teams.

Last year it paid the price after dithering over whether to drop Sergio Perez, and now, having promoted Lawson, for fear of losing him Helmut Marko warned at the time, they are pondering whether to replace him with either a driver they'd previously rejected or a rookie.

Of course, if we were in a conspiracy theory state of mind we'd suggest a deal that would see Franco Colapinto return to Williams and Carlos Sainz freed up to return to Red Bull.

Then, of course, Flavio Briatore, never one to miss out on a money earner, might already be eyeing the second Red Bull berth for his young Argentine.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Pavlo, 5 hours ago

"@Spindoctor - but F1 is and always was tough to kids in a cockpit, as any top level sport. There really is a queue of kids waiting in the queue, and giving more chances to one means giving less chances to another.

To be fair, at the time of those "ex Drivers" there were more tests in F1, so the likes of Sir Ron would simply try several kids in the actual car. Now Mr. Marko and Mr. Horner had to guess before the season who can manage RB better, and still have to guess - maybe Yuki would be a second slower, or Carlos half a second faster? And how long would each of them take to adapt - this is impossible to test fairly."

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2. Posted by BrightonCorgi, 8 hours ago

"It should've been Yuki's seat all along."

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3. Posted by givememychoice, 9 hours ago

"I mean, its a bit of a non article. All max says is that the red bull is tough to drive, and that lawson would probably get better results at the junior team, because he could extract more of the potential. He was on a similar pace to tsunoda last year. One would assume the same pattern if he was back in the rb. So he would be ahead of where he is in the red bull. Its him saying that he is a perfectly decent driver, but just isnt working in the car. Does anybody disagree with that viewpoint? If so, what is the disagreement?
"

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4. Posted by Spindoctor, 11 hours ago

"@Woking Chap - don't forget Max's ever loveable dad...

.
RBR is a truly delightful place to be - if you are VMax. For others it's a case of "put up or shut up".
The current car is clearly a bit tricky. It was custom-made & has been developed to suit Max - he's had a good few years to learn to exploit its foibles & increasing failings.
Clearly the car has reached some kind of equilibrium with Ms Physics whereby additional speed generates more trickiness. I expect that it will be sorted, though Merc's struggles took a while.

In a more general sense I'm a bit peed off with all those pundits gravely intoning "That's F1. It's tough. If you're not good enough there's lots of others waiting in the wings" etc. To them, including several ex Drivers, it appears that the kid in the cockpit is just another component, like a revised front wing, to be replaced if it doesn't work immediately. Lucky for those pensioned off drivers that the likes of Sir Ron weren't that ruthless or lacking in patience."

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5. Posted by Wokingchap, 11 hours ago

"Max, Marko and horner really deserve each other.... what a tricky trio."

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Verstappen has little comfort for Lawson

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