- Jos Verstappen, himself a former F1 driver, expressed his concerns over the recent departures of chief strategist Will Courtenay to McLaren, sporting director Jonathan Wheatley to Audi-Sauber and design guru Adrian Newey to Aston Martin.
Jos Verstappen said the instability under team principal Christian Horner is not sustainable.
“It can’t go on this way. It will explode,” Jos Verstappen told Mail Sport. “There is tension here while he remains in position.”
Max Verstappen still leads the F1 drivers’ standings and remains in position to win a fourth straight world championship, despite going winless in the last eight races. His once dominant lead has shrunk to 52 points over Lando Norris with six races remaining.
“This is what I warned about,” Jos Verstappen told Motorsport.com.
“The team then says: ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter, we have someone else (who we can put on that position).’
“But it’s too many people now (leaving). And Max gets questions about it every time and so on. So yeah, I think it’s just not good, what’s happening at the moment.”
Lawson, 22, is replacing dropped Australian Daniel Ricciardo for the last six races of the season alongside Yuki Tsunoda at the Red Bull-owned RB team, with Austin a sprint weekend on October 19-20.
The Kiwi impressed after five races last season when Ricciardo was injured and is being assessed for a 2025 drive with RB and a possible longer term future with Red Bull.
“In Austin, he’ll be taking an engine penalty there anyway,” Horner told Formula One’s F1 Nation podcast. “So he’s got a bit of a soft landing, or soft re-entry.
“But of course he’s going to be gauged against his teammate.
“He was very quick against him last year, I think Yuki stepped it up a gear again this year so it’s going to be fascinating to see how quickly he adapts, how quickly he gets on with it.”
The penalty, inherited from Ricciardo, for exceeding the season’s engine allocation is 10 places in the first instance.
Lawson told the New Zealand Herald that he needed to perform and nothing was set in stone.
