ANALYSIS – There might be a real explanation behind the struggles of Red Bull’s second drivers. And no, it’s not because Max Verstappen has a different car. Let’s go step by step.
The debut of Isack Hadjar was surprising: while Verstappen ended up 20th after an incident, the Frenchman qualified in a stunning third place before retiring from the race. Yet the story already feels familiar when it comes to the second seat at Red Bull Racing.
Back to 2020: the first car fully developed around Verstappen
Let’s rewind to 2020, the first season where the Red Bull project was essentially built entirely around Verstappen (the 2019 car had also been developed with input from Daniel Ricciardo). At the beginning of that season, the performances of the second driver, Alexander Albon, were actually strong. In Austria, without the collision with Lewis Hamilton, he might have taken his first career win.
He followed that with a fourth and a fifth place. But as the season progressed, Albon’s performance dropped. At first it looked like a simple slump, but it was actually the start of a pattern that would repeat again and again.
From Perez to Tsunoda: the same pattern repeats
Albon eventually left and was replaced by Sergio Pérez. The Mexican started the 2021 season very strongly: he won in Baku, finished third in France and delivered several strong performances, sitting only about 40 points behind Hamilton after eight races. Then the decline arrived. Despite three podiums late in the season, he also finished outside the points five times. The same pattern appeared in 2022: six top-three finishes in the first eight races, and only six more across the remaining fourteen.
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The 2023 season was even more striking. In the first five races, Pérez won two Grands Prix, a Sprint race, and finished second twice. In the remaining seventeen races he never won again, finishing second only twice and third three times. The trend continued in 2024: six podiums (including Sprints) in the first six races, then none in the remaining eighteen.
In 2025, aside from the brief stint of Liam Lawson, Yuki Tsunoda started well with three points finishes in the first five races. Over the remaining seventeen events, he managed only four more.
So is it really a “cursed seat”… or is there a technical explanation?
The technical explanation
According to Albon, there is. Speaking on High Performance, the Thai driver explained how the Red Bull car works. Verstappen prefers a car with an extremely strong and aggressive front end, very sharp on corner entry. At the start of the season the car is relatively balanced, but over time Verstappen asks for developments that make the front end even more reactive.
The result is that the car becomes faster – but also increasingly difficult to drive at the limit. Early in the season the Red Bull is manageable. As development progresses, however, extracting 100% of its potential requires extreme precision – something that very few drivers can consistently achieve.
Albon explained that “when drivers try to match Verstappen’s pace, they begin taking more risks”, which often leads to mistakes and crashes. Confidence drops, performance declines, and at the same time the car becomes even sharper and more aggressive. Now the spotlight moves to Hadjar, who will have to prove he can handle the Red Bull RB22 even as the development race intensifies during the season.
Photo: Red Bull, Oracle Red Bull Racing, Formula 1
