Since 2019 questions have been circling the Formula One community on whether the 2nd Red Bull Racing seat is cursed. It started with young drivers being replaced after a couple races to the car being undrivable for anyone but Red Bull’s Golden Child Max Verstappen. Is the “Curse” real? Who is responsible? Will it ever get better? Find out of this episode of “Deep Dive Motorsports.”
Research Links:
Pierre Gasly’s Career
Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Alex Klancko/Narration: If you have paid attention to Formula One in the past 10 years you will know…
Commentary: Max Verstappen, Max Verstappen, Max Verstappen is a four-time Formula One World Champion
Alex Klancko/Narration: And if you know Max Verstappen, then you know Red Bull Racing, and if you know Red Bull Racing, you might know the “Curse of the 2nd Red Bull Racing But before we get into that, lets introduce Red Bull Racing…
Audio: *F1 cars driving by*
Alex Klancko/Narration: Red Bull Racing was founded in 2005 and has achieved some of the highest of highs in the sport. They first shared success with Sebastian Vettel as they won four consecutive drivers championships from 2010–2013 and found success again after a 17-year-old Max Verstappen joined the team in 2016. Verstappen himself has won 4 consecutive championships from 2021–2024 ranging from a last lap championship win to complete domination over the entire season. But there is one thing that is not consistent with Red Bull and that is their 2nd driver. Ever since Verstappen has been with Red Bull Racing it has been very hard to find a driver good enough for the 2nd seat. And that’s what we are going to talk about in today’s podcast
Alex Klancko/Narration: My Name is Alex Klancko and Welcome To Deep Dive Motorsports
Audio: *F1 cars driving by*
Alex Klancko/Narration: Since 2019 a question has been going around the F1 community and that is… Is the second Red Bull seat cursed? Many people have many different opinions on the subject, and I have two F1 fans, Jack and Javier to tell us all their thoughts on if the second Red Bull seat is cursed.
Alex Klancko/Narration: But before we get into the interviews, let’s talk about what the whole “Cursed” seat.
Audio: *F1 cars going by*
Alex Klancko/Narration: After the 2018 Formula One season, Daniel Riccardo left Red Bull to go to Renault and Pierre Gasly was brought in to replace him. Gasly had been in the Red Bull Junior Program since 2014 and was a pretty big prospect brought up by Red Bull after winning F2 in 2016 and finishing 2nd in Super Formula in 2017. Gasly also raced for Torro Rosso, Red Bull’s sister team in 2018 before being promoted in 2019. But as you probably guessed, the Pierre Gasly-Red Bull Racing gig did not go as planned as Gasly was dropped back down to Torro Rosso for Alex Albon as he only got 63 points to Verstappen’s 181 at the time of the demotion, just 12 races into the season.
Alex Klancko/Narration: The next driver up was the previously mentioned Alex Albon who raced for Red Bull for the final 9 races in 2019 and all of the 2020 season. Albon’s performances weren’t spectacular but they weren’t terrible. He would end up finishing 7th in the 2020 F1 standings with 105 points, but again, was well off Verstappen who had 214 points and Red Bull would end up dropping Albon from the team for the 2021 season.
Alex Klancko/Narration: Then there was Sergio Perez who raced with Red Bull from 2021–2024 and had mixed reviews. Perez, a veteran driver, helped Max win the drivers title in 2021 and he finished 4th in the championship with 190 points, but Max being Max blew him out of the water with 395.5 points. In 2022 Perez was 3rd in the standing with 305 points, but still fell short of Max’s 454 points as Max went on to win his 2nd title. And for the first 5 races of 2023, Perez was looking to improve once again as he secured 4 podiums including 2 wins but he started to struggle for the rest of the season. And although Perez finished 2nd in the championship with 285 points, Max still finished with 290 points more than him. And as you saw Perez struggle more and more in 2023… 2024 would be the end of his time at Red Bull as Perez completely fell off a cliff for basically the entire season. He finished 8th in the standings with 152 points to Max’s 437 as Red Bull ended up 3rd in the Constructors race. Perez would be released from Red Bull entering the 2025 season.
Alex Klancko/Narration: And then there is their latest victim, Liam Lawson, who only had 2 races in the Red Bull car before being replaced by Yuki Tsunoda earlier this season.
Alex Klancko/Narration: And now that we have that backstory, lets see what Jack and Javier think about the “Curse” of the 2nd Red Bull seat.
Audio: *F1 cars going by*
Music: *Music Starts*
Alex Klancko: Jack, where do you think the curse of the 2nd Red Bull seat came from?
Jack Hall: I think it comes from Max Verstappen. I’ll just say that his driving style is unique. He likes this really twitchy, really angry car to drive that matches his driving style but very few other drivers [can handle it.]
Jack Hall: Because these cars are all on the very edge because Max can extract every last millisecond out of it, but there might not be another driver on the planet who can drive those cars nearly as well as he can. And when they don’t have the room to give fomfort to that second driver, it ends up with his cursed effect where ither they’re DNFing every second week or they’re just well underperforming versus what Max is doing in that.
Music: *Music Ends*
Audio: *F1 cars going by*
Music: *Music Starts*
Alex Klancko: Do you think also that maybe a part of the issues with that second seat has to do more with management than Max’s driving style?
Jack Hall: I think that you can attribute it to the driving style while saying that it is entirely Red Bull’s fault the way they have managed these drivers, putting them in a situation where they couldn’t realistically be expected to meet their expectations and having an insanely quick trigger to pull them out of that seat when these are drivers that have come up through their ranks as youth development drivers, that have been promised this seat and have been given such a short leash that they’re changing teams not after one season, but in the middle of that first season, right?
Jack Hall: Liam Lawson made it two races before being switched out, you had Alex Albon switch halfway for Pierre Gasly and then you know, vise versa the next year, right?
Jack Hall: Like, it’s just this continual chaos because Red Bull kind of refuses to acknowledge the problem. And so then they still demand Max level excellence out of their drivers without realizing that is impossible.
Music: *Music Ends*
Audio: *F1 cars going by*
Music: *Music Starts*
Alex Klancko: Javier, do you think the second Red Bull seat will have any sort of stability?
Javier Jimenez: It’s very hard to say. I mean, if we see the history of that second seat in the last year’s, Red Bull tend to hire very young drivers like Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Liam Lawson, and they don’t give them enough time to learn the car and improve as drivers.
Javier Jimenez: Albon for example was removed after just 26 races, Gasly only 12 and Lawson only 2 races. How can they expect a driver to grow and deliver points and results if they just don’t give them enough time?
Javier Jimenez: They tend to have a very short leash for all their drivers and the only kind of successful driver was Sergio Perez, he lasted four years, so historically if you ask me I think its very very hard but if you ask me I think no, they are not going to find any kind of stable driver until they start building a car for both drivers, not only for one.
Music: *Music Ends*
Audio: *F1 cars going by*
Alex Klancko/Narration : So is it Red Bull Management’s fault or is it Max Verstappen’s driving style that harmed the results of the 2nd driver? It’s a combination of both. As Jack and Javier said, Max’s driving style is very unique. Max likes a car with a lot of oversteer, which allows him to turn quickly into corners and exit at a high speed. He is very good at controlling the rear stability by using the twitchiness to help him rotate the car into the corner. And this only gets worse as they make it more and more twitchy for Max, because with other teams becoming faster, they favor Max with the car and try to give Max all the speed possible. But not every driver is good at this and it takes time for drivers to learn it. And that brings up Red Bull Management… They don’t let drivers develop enough to handle the car… As they said, it takes time for drivers to learn the car and get used to the twitchiness, but as soon as Red Bull Management see that the driver isn’t doing well, they throw them to the curb and start with a new driver. If Red Bull gave the driver time to develop into the twitchiness, they might not have the issue of the 2nd driver not being able to do as well as Max. It is a lose-lose situation for any driver that plays 2nd fiddle to Max.
Alex Klancko/Narration: And that brings me to Is the 2nd Red Bull Seat Cursed? Yes and No… Is the seat literally cursed… absolutely not… but is it cursed by Max’s driving style and Red Bull Management… Yes. This whole “curse” was caused by Red Bull Management and Max’s driving style, not just one, not just the other, but both. And as soon as they can figure out a solution, the 2nd Red Bull seat, will lose its curse.
Alex Klancko/Narration: Thank you for listening to Deep Dive Motorsports and don’t forget to tune back in for more Motorsports Deep Dives. Im Alex Klancko, and have an amazing day.
Audio: *F1 cars going by*
