THE FACTS
And now we wait.
With Red Bull’s self-imposed deadline of the Mexican Grand Prix having passed, all eyes will be on Milton Keynes for news of exactly who is driving where in 2026.
Liam Lawson, Yuki Tsunoda and Isack Hadjar are all to learn their fates over the coming days, even if that news is not publicly announced.
Assuming Arvid Lindblad steps into Racing Bulls, that leaves two seats between the three drivers, with Max Verstappen not going anywhere for another year at least.
But even with Lawson retiring on the opening laps at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, did his two rivals do enough to put themselves at the front of the queue?
Here’s what we learned in Mexico.
Here we are again, then. A year on from Red Bull waiting until the end of the season to decide who would partner Verstappen in 2025, making the call to settle the matter early leaves little clarity over which way the cards will fall.
Only 11 points separate the three drivers in the standings; Hadjar in 10th, Lawson 15th and Tsunoda 17th.
While Red Bull have all the data they will need to make the decision, you’d make a more than fair argument that no one has done enough to earn that second seat at Red Bull next year.
For all he’s accomplished this year, Hadjar has not kicked on since his podium at Zandvoort. While he has scored 39 points in his 20 races, 15 of them came from that one result.
Since then, he’s managed just two 10th-placed finishes in five races. That is not the form of a driver who would be expected to contribute to a world title push next year, if promoted.
Admittedly not at the same level as Hadjar, but Lawson has also had moments of brilliance this year. Points finishes in Monaco, Austria, Belgium, Hungary and Azerbaijan show that the driver Red Bull backed for that seat in the first place is worth persisting with.
The only question is if the Red Bull seat is off the table, should Lawson remain in the stable at Racing Bulls – a team for junior drivers to push for promotion?
Lastly, Tsunoda’s place does seem the least secure. Even with an uptick in results seen in Austin last week, seventh in both the sprint and grand prix, the reasons to part ways might be too strong.
The ties to Honda will always hang over his head, as Red Bull partners with Ford next year.
While that link between Honda and Tsunoda has diminished over this season, the Japanese manufacturer’s influence on the grid still lingers.
They’ll link with Aston Martin next year and the fact they currently have no reserve driver signed does leave space for Tsunoda to move – if he loses his Red Bull seat.
As Red Bull have continued to upgrade the RB21, as a means of bringing Verstappen back into the title fight with the two McLaren cars, Tsunoda’s displays have improved.
However, while on paper he’s netted 16 points in his last four race weekends, Tsunoda’s efforts are not that of a championship contender.
In Austin, where he took seventh in the grand prix, Tsunoda was still more than 50s behind Verstappen on track. In Mexico, where he slipped from 10th to finish 11th and missed the points, that gap to his teammate was 47 seconds.
At the start of the year, Red Bull senior adviser Dr Helmut Marko gave Lawson the target of finishing within three 10ths of a second behind his teammate each lap, as an acceptable window.
If the maths is carried over, Tsunoda should only have been 16s back in Austin and 21s behind in Mexico.
To make matters worse, Tsunoda was outpaced in the weekend’s first practice session by Red Bull junior Lindblad, who stepped into Verstappen’s car through Formula One’s young driver testing.
Expected to go into Racing Bulls, Lindblad’s second outing in the RB21 saw him produce a lap 0.093s quicker than his more senior teammate.
That might not be the full picture; teams trial a number of different configurations, tyre combinations and fuel loads during practice.
But as the first practice session saw nine teams run a junior driver, Tsunoda was the only one to finish behind his less-experienced teammate.
On Racing Bulls’ side, Lawson was the senior driver to make way for a rookie, as Ayumu Iwasa took his place.
That, though, clearly impacted the Kiwi’s weekend. In Free Practice 2 (FP2) and FP3, Lawson continued to improve his times throughout the session.
After the first day, Lawson admitted he had struggled to get to terms with the track and its conditions, with Mexico’s altitude making it difficult for teams to apply the correct level of downforce to their cars.
And while he was quick in the first stage of qualifying, finishing sixth, that less time on track saw Lawson unable to complete a flying lap in the second.
Often, too much can be made of practice. But going into the rest of the weekend without that session up his sleeve was a harsh reality that Red Bull handed Lawson, at a time where he could have used as much time on track as possible.
By colliding with Sainz on the opening lap, Lawson set a record he won’t entirely be thrilled with.
Mexico marks the Kiwi’s fifth Did Not Finish (DNF) of the season. However, while from the outside that doesn’t make for good reading, Lawson is actually rarely at fault.
His first, Melbourne, came when Red Bull left the Kiwi out with slick tyres on a dry track, in order to pit Verstappen first.
Miami saw him sustain damage to his floor after Alpine’s Jack Doohan veered into him, in what proved to be his final race of the season and potentially his career.
Canada? A power unit fault saw Racing Bulls make the call to retire Lawson to prevent further damage, while Great Britain also had a first-lap crash after Tsunoda ran wide to force Esteban Ocon’s Haas into the Kiwi driver.
Failing to bring your car home in one piece is never a good look. But in Lawson’s case, every incident has seemed to boil down to misfortune rather than any real fault on his part.
With Red Bull’s decision expected sooner rather than later, the real shame is that neither Lawson or Tsunoda will get next month’s Brazilian Grand Prix to impress.
Last year, both drivers – then Racing Bulls teammates – enjoyed strong weekends, in horrendous conditions that levelled the playing field for the 10 teams.
Lawson qualified fifth – his equal-best starting position – and came home in ninth, after tangling with Oscar Piastri in the wet.
Tsunoda, meanwhile, started third and came home seventh, as Red Bull stablemate Max Verstappen went from 17th to victory in what ultimately sealed his fourth straight win.
But Red Bull going early in deciding next year’s pairings – rather than use the entirety of the season – means that whoever is without a seat next year will be on that start line in Interlagos all the same.
Alex Powell is a sports journalist for the NZ Herald. He has been a sports journalist since 2016.