Liam Lawson's swift Red Bull F1 demotion joins list of sport's most cutthroat decisions

New York Times

31-03-2025

Liam Lawson made clear when he entered Formula One that he was there to win, not to make friends.
His quick rise from replacing popular Australian Daniel Ricciardo in the Racing Bulls car to partnering four-time world champion Max Verstappen at Red Bull this year generated plenty of anticipation for his potential at the team.
Advertisement
Just two grands prix into the 2025 season, however, Lawson found out just how ruthless sport at the highest level can be.
On Thursday, after several days of speculation, it was announced he was being sent back to the Racing Bulls — Red Bull's second team — with Yuki Tsunoda heading in the opposite direction.
There is, of course, a duty of care element at hand, and Lawson should not be ridiculed for being promoted to the Red Bull drive before he was ready. That was ultimately the team's choice — and why would the New Zealander turn down that opportunity?
But Lawson's demotion, whether it is the right or wrong decision so early in a season, will be long remembered as one of the swiftest and most unsentimental decisions in the sporting world.
The 23-year-old is not alone, though. He now joins a long list of professional athletes and coaches who will think they should have been given more time.
Formula One is as cutthroat as it comes, and Lawson is not the only driver to lose his seat in it after just two races. Ferrari, for example, replaced Luca Badoer with Giancarlo Fisichella in the 2009 season before his third grands prix.
In Badoer's defence, he had not been Ferrari's first choice to replace the injured Felipe Massa — the retired Michael Schumacher was, but a neck problem ruled him out — and he hadn't raced in F1 since 1999.
Another brutal episode in the sport was when Yuji Ide lasted only four races before Super Aguri demoted him in the 2006 season.
Ide, then a 31-year-old rookie, was part of an all-Japanese line-up alongside Takuma Sato but failed to finish his first two races, in Bahrain and Malaysia. He then finished 13th in Australia before causing a first-lap crash with Christijan Albers in Imola, prompting Aguri Suzuki, a former F1 driver and Super Aguri's founder, to reportedly tell F1 Racing Magazine that Ide 'didn't know how to drive an F1 car'. Ide was dropped following the Imola episode and didn't race in F1 again.
Ruthless decisions are not exclusive to F1, though.
Crystal Palace gave Dutch manager Frank de Boer a three-year contract in June 2017, only to sack him 10 weeks later after five games, the Premier League side having lost their opening four matches of the season and failed to score a goal.
De Boer spent 450 minutes of actual game time in the Palace dugout, making his tenure at Selhurst Park the shortest reign in the Premier League era in terms of matches.
Advertisement
Certainly more memorable was the English Football Association's (FA) decision to part ways with Sam Allardyce after he had managed just one game — a 1-0 win over Slovakia — and spent only 67 days in charge of England's men's team.
His exit followed an investigation by two undercover reporters at English newspaper the Daily Telegraph, which alleged that Allardyce had offered advice to circumvent the FA's transfer rules, with the newspaper also alleging he used his status as England manager to negotiate a £400,000 fee ($517, 640 at current conversion rates).
An FA statement described Allardyce's conduct as 'inappropriate', with the then 61-year-old offering a 'sincere and wholehearted apology' for his actions. Greg Clark, the FA's chairman at the time, told the BBC: 'We agreed his position was untenable and he has left by mutual consent. We didn't have to sack him.'
In the NFL, Urban Meyer was sacked by the Jacksonville Jaguars after only 13 games as the franchise's head coach during the 2021 season. The Athletic previously detailed Meyer's disastrous year in Florida, which saw him leave having won just twice while losing 11 times.
Meyer had won three national titles as a head coach at the college level between 2006 and 2014 but, talking on the Don't @ Me podcast in January 2022, described his time at the Jaguars as 'the worst experience I've had in my professional lifetime'.
The NBA's Los Angeles Lakers gave Mike Brown short shrift when it came to trusting him to replace legendary coach Phil Jackson at the end of the 2011 season. Brown was given a three-year contract, a sign of the franchise's faith in his ability to take the star-studded team that included Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol to new heights.
Like Red Bull's decision to promote Lawson, Brown's appointment didn't work. Instead of getting off to a convincing start, he lost four of his first five games, prompting the Lakers to quickly decide to sack him and turn to Mike D'Antoni.
Advertisement
In tennis, Emma Raducanu, Britain's former U.S. Open champion, parted company with her latest coach, Vladimir Platenik, after working together for just one match, her management team announcing the news on March 19.
Sticking with ruthless tennis decisions, in November's Davis Cup quarter-final against Australia, Team USA captain Bob Bryan, with the tie 1-1, decided to switch the Olympic men's doubles silver medalists Rajeev Ram and Austin Krajicek for singles players Ben Shelton and Tommy Paul.
The decision backfired as Team USA lost that final match in straight sets, although Bryan insisted in the aftermath that he 'wouldn't change a thing'.
Simon Kerrigan's career as an England cricketer was a memorably short one. A left-arm bowler, he made his international debut against Australia in the fifth Ashes Test at The Oval in London in 2013.
In the first innings, he conceded 53 runs from his 48 balls, with 28 coming from his opening 12 deliveries as batter Shane Watson hit him to all parts of the ground. Kerrigan was 24 and highly rated, but never featured for England again.
His career was never quite the same as he was released by his county-level team, Lancashire, in 2018, though he did show great perseverance and return to the professional ranks in 2020 with Northamptonshire. It was another brutal demonstration of an athlete not being at the level required to compete at the highest level.
At least Lawson, by moving to the Racing Bulls, can take solace from the fact he still gets to compete in F1 and he is not the first driver to have not made it with the team.
The onus, and ultimately pressure, will now be on him to prove he is still able to carve out a successful career in the sport and, maybe more importantly, be remembered for what he goes on to achieve rather than being known as the driver Red Bull got rid of after only two races.