Racing Bulls Delay Driver Decisions Amidst Lawson's Uncertainty
Alan Permane is in no hurry. Liam Lawson doesn’t have that luxury.
At Sao Paulo, as the F1 paddock hummed with the usual end-of-season intrigue, the Racing Bulls team principal doubled down on a stance that will calm almost everyone but his own drivers: this decision will take as long as it needs.
Racing Bulls slow the trigger
Permane made it clear both Racing Bulls seats for next year remain open, and that this time Red Bull’s junior outfit will not be rushed into a call. The message, delivered with a pointed nod to the past, sounded like a quiet critique of the wider Red Bull machine.
“Red Bull’s had a very successful young driver program,” he said, before adding the sting. Sometimes, he suggested, the system has moved too fast, with “snap decisions” and not enough time for youngsters to settle.
Racing Bulls, he insisted, are “trying to apply a little bit of science”. That means poring over data, studying every option, and resisting the urge to lock anything in early. “Time is on our side. We’re not in a rush to do anything,” Permane said. “I’m very confident the right decision will be made.”
That confidence will not make the wait easier for Lawson or Arvid Lindblad, both left twisting in the wind as the season runs down. Permane admitted the frustration, promised an answer “in the coming weeks” and predicted “everyone will be happy” when the call finally comes.
The problem? He said almost exactly the same thing before Singapore. A month on, nothing is signed.
Young guns, old heads
Permane framed the decision as a balance between raw pace and the longer-term mission of the Red Bull system. Speed remains the first filter. It always does. But Racing Bulls are not just there to score points.
“We are here to bring young talent through,” he explained. That doesn’t mean endlessly “churning young talent through the car”. Some experience is needed to measure that talent against a known quantity. It’s a familiar dilemma for a junior team trying to compete in the midfield while still serving as a finishing school.
Permane stressed that both of his current drivers are “performing excellently”, even as he acknowledged the tension that uncertainty brings. He refused to rule out any combination of drivers and confirmed that discussions are close to being wrapped up, with Formula 2 contender Nikola Tsolov among those in the frame.
What he would not give was a date. “We’re getting there, and it won’t be long,” was as far as he went.
For a team boss contracted until 2031, there is plenty of runway. For a young driver on the bubble, there is almost none.
Lawson on the brink
Lawson’s situation is as stark as it is uncomfortable. Ninth in the drivers’ standings, 83 points on the board, and the leading driver outside the top four teams, he has done just about everything a junior can reasonably do in a midfield car.
Across the four races before Brazil, he banked 26 points. The question he put back to the team, speaking to F1 TV, was brutally simple: what more can he do?
“I don’t know what else they want me to do,” he said. “It’s just one of those things at the moment.”
The clock makes it worse. With the season’s end closing in and other teams finalising line-ups, the delay bites harder. “When something like this is pushed all the way to the end, you’re left with not really any options,” Lawson admitted. There is no Plan B. Not a realistic one, anyway.
On track at Interlagos, he kept doing his part: 10th in first practice, 13th in the second session. Solid. Professional. Not the numbers of a driver going quietly.
Paddock sympathy, Red Bull reality
From the outside, there is growing sympathy. Sky Sports F1 analyst Bernie Collins highlighted Lawson’s role in helping Racing Bulls into fifth in the constructors’ standings and argued that, from a performance perspective, he has ticked the boxes.
“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,” she said.
Naomi Schiff went a step further, suggesting the verdict might already be obvious if Racing Bulls were a fully independent team, free from Red Bull’s long-term succession planning.
“If they managed themselves as their own completely separate entity with their own mission, then maybe he would have done enough,” she said. The sting followed. “But unfortunately that’s just not the setup they have there.”
That is the crux. Racing Bulls are not choosing simply who scores best for them next year. They are choosing who might, one day, sit in a Red Bull seat.
Mexico flashpoint and old scars
The debate has even dragged in Lawson’s clash with Max Verstappen during practice in Mexico City. Both drivers were penalised, Lawson apologised, and Verstappen publicly questioned his former teammate’s judgement, while pointedly referencing the New Zealander’s uncertain future.
If that moment is used against Lawson, Sky’s Martin Brundle wants no part of it.
“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,” Brundle said. “That’s so childish. I can’t believe it is.”
Brundle knows what it feels like when performance alone doesn’t protect you. He recalled losing his Benetton seat after starting to beat Michael Schumacher, a reminder that talent and results do not always win the political war.
“It happens in this business for any number of reasons,” he said. Commercial pressures, long-term strategy, unseen jigsaw pieces falling into place — all can shape a career in ways that look baffling from the outside. “But I think Liam’s done a tremendous job for them.”
Waiting for the call
So Racing Bulls keep studying, modelling, and weighing. Permane keeps talking about science and process. The paddock keeps speculating.
And Lawson keeps driving, lap after lap, with his future hanging over every braking point.
The numbers say he deserves to stay. The system may say something else.
