'It boggles the mind': Red Bull's early struggles prove Daniel Ricciardo should have been promoted last year

Red Bull should have promoted Daniel Ricciardo into its second seat alongside Max Verstappen during last year's mid-season break.

And not doing so has led to more than just the PR disaster that stemmed from his unceremonious sacking from Racing Bulls, then RB, only four races later.

Two races into the 2025 F1 season, Liam Lawson's entire career is under threat and the team look poised to perform the biggest backflip since Mark Webber in Valencia in 2010.

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Officially, Red Bull will meet this week to discuss the Kiwi ace's future at the team. There are numerous reports the call has already been made, and Yuki Tsunoda will be in the seat for his home Japanese Grand Prix next weekend.

But if you think bumping Lawson back to Racing Bulls after two races at tracks he's never competed at is harsh, there are rumours on Wednesday morning Red Bull have reopened discussions with Franco Colapinto.

Could he be out of the sport altogether? It would be more than brutal.

But it would also be very on-brand for the Red Bull program, far and away the most ruthless young driver program in motorsport. There is no time to get your feet under the desk. No time to get up to speed.

The expectation is to hit the ground and win, or be replaced.

Lawson would be the third graduate of its young driver program to fail at the senior team having been promoted prematurely. Luckily for them, Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon have been able to reignite their careers elsewhere.

Daniel Ricciardo himself was a Red Bull junior driver. He was also dynamite in a Red Bull car until Max Verstappen's arrival.

Once the prodigious Dutchman arrived at Milton Keynes midway through 2016 – after the team swapped him with Russian Daniil Kvyat – the team's focus shifted towards him. Now, the entire car – from the chassis to the core componentry – is designed to maximise his unique driving style.

If you're anyone else, good luck to you.

An aside about the relationship between Verstappen and Kvyat. Verstappen is expecting a child with Kelly Piquet. She is the daughter of three-time world champion Nelson. She is also Kvyat's ex-partner, and the pair have a daughter together. The gag goes Verstappen first stole Kvyat's race seat, and then his girlfriend.

But we digress.

It's impossible to know for sure if Ricciardo would have been able to do any better in that Red Bull seat than Sergio Perez, but he surely couldn't have done any worse. It also would've been a fantastic piece of PR from a brand with some of the best marketing brains in the world.

Putting Ricciardo back in his old seat would have also answered a question that had been burning since he split with McLaren at the end of 2022. If he'd been able just to mix it with Verstappen, not even necessarily beat him, he'd likely still be racing today.

Even if Ricciardo had failed, it would have changed nothing. The team would've still finished third in the constructors' title, and one of the most popular drivers in modern F1 history would've been given the farewell he deserved.

And Helmut Marko, Christian Horner and Laurent Mekies would've had a few extra races to evaluate Lawson and Tsunoda.

Instead, they sacked Ricciardo via press release only four races later, pissing off millions of fans around the world. Then at the end of the season, they did exactly the same thing with Perez.

It boggles the mind.

Even if they didn't think Tsunoda was ready, Carlos Sainz should've been their man. After all, his availability became known when Ferrari announced last February they'd poached Lewis Hamilton from Mercedes and he was out of a drive.

He, too, was a former Red Bull junior. He eventually signed with Williams, and later claimed Red Bull didn't even bother to contact him to gauge his interest in the seat.

Ricciardo has said publicly he's "done with F1", and it's hard to imagine a world recalling Perez is a viable option.

And so Red Bull look as if they'll go with Tsunoda – the correct decision all along. It would be thoroughly deserved.

He's spent four seasons driving for the junior team, and had the wood over two highly-rated teammates.

He dispatched Nyck de Vries in only 10 races, generally out-performed Ricciardo, and finished ahead of Lawson in four of the six races they were teammates at the end of last year.

In the first two races this season, he's been superb if unlucky. He qualified fifth in Melbourne and was on for a strong points finish before the team mucked the strategy call as rain started to fall late in the race.

In China, he drove to sixth in the sprint race, and was a chance at points again in the grand prix before his front wing inexplicably failed, which forced him into a late pitstop.

Tsunoda will be the most experienced driver Red Bull have ever promoted into the senior team from the junior team.

But should he – like many others before him – fail, Red Bull will be hard-pressed to find experienced drivers willing to step into the seat. Would they turn to Isack Hadjar? He'd be on a hiding to nothing.

And what if Max Verstappen takes the big money and goes to Aston Martin? You can't just change your entire design philosophy overnight.

If the car really is that hard to drive for anyone who's not Max, and it's looking more and more as if that's the case, they'd go from championship contenders to cellar dwellers overnight.

Should've gone with Dan.