Red Bull’s Driver Carousel Spins Again as Lawson and Tsunoda Return, While Sainz Bets on Williams

Formula 1 returned from its latest break with the sort of driver news that makes the sport’s carefully constructed long-term plans feel almost meaningless.

Isack Hadjar will miss the Dutch Grand Prix after suffering a wrist injury, triggering not one but two familiar faces to move through Red Bull’s increasingly complicated driver system. Liam Lawson will return to Red Bull Racing, while Yuki Tsunoda will step back into Racing Bulls. Meanwhile, Carlos Sainz has gone in completely the opposite direction. Rather than keeping his options open, the Spaniard has agreed a new multi-year contract with Williams, with Marca reporting that his salary has risen to €30 million per year. One organization is shuffling drivers around like someone repeatedly hitting the undo button. The other has apparently decided stability is worth paying an extraordinary amount of money for.

Welcome back, Formula 1.

Liam Lawson Is Back at Red Bull — Somehow

Red Bull confirmed that Hadjar’s wrist injury will prevent him from competing at Zandvoort, announcing Lawson as his replacement in the RB22.

It creates one of the stranger career paths in recent F1 history: AlphaTauri. Racing Bulls. Red Bull. Racing Bulls. Red Bull. Racing Bulls. And now Red Bull again. Lawson has somehow spent four seasons around Formula 1 without completing a full season for one team. If this becomes a Grill the Grid question ten years from now, there is a decent chance even Lawson himself won’t remember the correct order.

More remarkably, Autosport noted that Lawson is the first driver to return to Red Bull Racing after previously being demoted. And apparently Zandvoort plus injured hands is simply how Liam Lawson gets F1 opportunities. Daniel Ricciardo broke his hand at Zandvoort in 2023 after crashing during practice, opening the door for Lawson’s first Formula 1 start. Three years later, Hadjar has suffered a wrist injury before the Dutch Grand Prix and Lawson is once again the replacement.

At this point, if you’re a Red Bull driver heading to Zandvoort, maybe keep Lawson away from your hands. It also continues a bizarre trend in which almost every major Lawson opportunity comes with an additional layer of difficulty. His 2023 substitution for Ricciardo came with almost no preparation. When he returned later, Austin was a Sprint weekend, leaving limited practice. He began 2025 at Red Bull with only 11 previous starts, then was dropped after two races. Returning to Racing Bulls meant adjusting again after missing the preseason preparation his teammate had received. Now he returns to Red Bull during another Sprint weekend.

Find someone who believes in you as much as Red Bull believes Liam Lawson can figure things out with minimal practice.

And Somehow, Yuki Tsunoda Returned

Lawson moving upward created another problem: Racing Bulls needed a driver.

The solution? Yuki Tsunoda. Yes, really.

Tsunoda will drive for Racing Bulls at Zandvoort, completing an almost comical circle of Red Bull driver swaps. Liam replaced Yuki. Isack replaced Liam. Liam is now replacing Isack. Yuki is replacing Liam. The Red Bull Ouroboros has achieved its final form. It is particularly funny given the recent discussion about Tsunoda potentially looking elsewhere — including IndyCar — as his Formula 1 future appeared increasingly limited. Now, seemingly out of nowhere, he has another F1 race weekend.

His long-discussed post-F1 restaurant may need to keep the “coming soon” sign up a little longer.

And while this is only a substitute appearance, there is an amusing consequence to Tsunoda returning: his No. 22 gets another lease on life. Because he is competing again, the number remains tied to him rather than continuing toward becoming available for another driver. Even F1’s silly season apparently extends to intellectual property rights over two-digit numbers. But the real fun begins if either Tsunoda or Lawson performs exceptionally well. Imagine Lawson jumping into the Red Bull and immediately delivering a strong result after being demoted from the team. Or Tsunoda returning to Racing Bulls and producing a top-five finish.

Red Bull has spent years creating a driver hierarchy. One chaotic weekend could make everyone start arguing about it again.

Hadjar’s Injury Could Have Consequences Beyond Zandvoort

The biggest unknown is how long Hadjar will actually be absent.

Red Bull’s announcement confirms only that the wrist injury prevents him from racing at Zandvoort. Beyond that, speculation about the severity and recovery timeline remains exactly that — speculation. That distinction matters. The next races arrive quickly, and a driver’s hands and wrists endure considerable forces in an F1 car. Baku, in particular, adds the workload of roughly 75 gear changes per lap. There is also an obvious recent comparison in Lance Stroll, who famously returned rapidly after breaking both wrists and a toe before the 2023 season. His determination was impressive, but it also provides a reminder that an F1 driver’s instinct is generally not to sit patiently at home until everything feels perfect.

These are people whose careers depend on being in the car. “Take a few extra weeks just to be safe” is not exactly the natural mentality of a racing driver.

Hadjar, however, at least appears to be taking his absence in good humor. Under Tsunoda’s Instagram post about his Racing Bulls return, Hadjar simply commented:

“Have fun bro”

It is such a short message that the internet immediately began conducting forensic linguistic analysis on whether it was sincere, sarcastic or the motorsport equivalent of “Congrats. Happy for you. Nice.”

Our interpretation is simpler: Hadjar and Tsunoda appear friendly, so it probably is genuine.

Although adding “lil” before “bro” would have changed the entire geopolitical situation.

Carlos Sainz Chooses Stability — and Williams Chooses Carlos Sainz

While Red Bull rearranges its driver lineup for Zandvoort, Williams has made a much more permanent decision.

The team announced that Sainz has agreed a new multi-year contract, saying the Spaniard had reaffirmed his commitment to Williams’ “long-term ambition of competing at the front of the F1 grid.”

That last part is doing quite a lot of work. Williams’ future remains one of the more difficult projects on the grid to evaluate. There have been signs of progress under James Vowles, but the team’s attempts to modernize infrastructure and processes inherited from years of underinvestment were never going to produce an instant transformation. And now the pressure increases considerably.

Williams has effectively said: we believe the drivers are good enough. Sainz and Alex Albon form an experienced lineup that has already demonstrated it can extract results when opportunities appear. If Williams doesn’t move forward, blaming the people holding the steering wheel becomes increasingly difficult. The more intriguing difference is contract security. Sainz now has a multi-year commitment while Albon is reportedly only secured for next year.

That does not necessarily mean Williams values Sainz more. Albon could have wanted flexibility himself, and “multi-year” tells us remarkably little about options, clauses or guaranteed seasons.

But considering how important Albon has been to Williams’ recent history, the contrast is noticeable.

€30 Million Changes the Conversation

Then there is the money.

Marca reports Sainz’s new salary has increased to €30 million per year, which would place him among Formula 1’s highest-paid drivers. That figure should be treated for what it is: a reported salary rather than publicly confirmed contract information. F1 driver compensation is notoriously opaque, and comparing reported base salaries becomes even messier when performance bonuses enter the equation. Still, if €30 million is remotely accurate, Williams really wanted Carlos Sainz.

And suddenly the team’s “long-term ambition” sounds a little less like marketing copy and more like an expensive bet.

The obvious criticism is that Williams is potentially paying superstar money without currently providing a superstar car. But that is also exactly why Williams might have to pay a premium. McLaren can offer a driver the possibility of victories and championships. A rebuilding team has to sell something else: money, security and belief in the future. Sainz gets compensated handsomely for waiting to see whether Williams can actually deliver.

Call them golden handcuffs if you want. They’re still very, very golden. There are obvious echoes of Daniel Ricciardo’s career decisions here, although Sainz has generally shown a greater ability to adapt across different teams and cars. His peaks may not have reached Ricciardo’s best Red Bull years, but Sainz has survived moves through Toro Rosso, Renault, McLaren, Ferrari and Williams while remaining a valuable commodity.

That adaptability may itself be part of what Williams believes it is buying.

Sainz’s Record Is Good — but Complicated

The timing of the contract also produced an interesting look at Sainz’s career race head-to-heads:

Combined, that’s 112-119. The numbers reinforce what has defined Sainz’s career: he has spent a remarkable amount of time alongside extremely strong teammates and generally remained competitive. But they also need context.

Straight race head-to-heads can count DNFs and other circumstances that have little to do with who actually drove better. The 12-12 against Hülkenberg, for example, becomes considerably less flattering to Sainz when races affected by retirements are removed. His relatively close record against Verstappen also came when Verstappen entered F1 at just 17 years old. And then there is the fact that Sainz and Gasly were apparently teammates for two races — a piece of Toro Rosso history that feels like something generated by an AI after being fed too many Red Bull driver swaps.

Which, given what is happening at Zandvoort this weekend, feels remarkably appropriate.

Williams Is Betting on More Than Race Results

Sainz’s value also isn’t limited to Sunday afternoon.

His technical feedback has long been part of his reputation, and that becomes particularly important for a team trying to climb out of the midfield. Williams doesn’t merely need someone capable of scoring points when the car allows it. It needs experienced drivers who can help engineers understand how to make the next car better. That may help explain why Williams is willing to make such a significant commitment. Sainz doesn’t have to be Max Verstappen for the contract to make sense. Williams isn’t currently trying to find the final tenth separating a championship-winning driver from another elite driver. It is trying to build a championship-capable organization.

The question is whether paying Sainz like a driver near the top of the market actually accelerates that process — or simply gives Williams an extremely expensive driver for a car that still isn’t ready.

Aston Martin, Meanwhile, Has Apparently Discovered Photoshop Filters

Not everything from the Dutch Grand Prix buildup needs deep analysis.

Sometimes Aston Martin releases a poster and the entire internet collectively asks what happened. The team’s Zandvoort artwork features Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll in a heavily blurred, green-tinted composition that looks less like an F1 promotional graphic and more like a DVD cover discovered at the bottom of a supermarket bargain bin in 2006. There are traces of The Matrix. There is confused-Mr.-Krabs energy. There is low-budget science-fiction thriller. There is potentially a trance album hidden somewhere in there.

Our favorite interpretation might be that Alonso is the protagonist of a mid-2000s young-adult novel and Stroll is the wealthy antagonist whose father owns the school. Either way, we desperately hope Aston Martin does not clarify the artistic direction.

Some things are better left unexplained.

Maybe Changing Your Mind Is Part of Being an F1 Fan

All of today’s stories strangely connect with another discussion happening among F1 fans: what opinion about Formula 1 have you completely changed?

The most common answer was the halo. Many initially hated its appearance. Some questioned whether it was necessary. Now, after incidents involving drivers including Romain Grosjean, Zhou Guanyu and Lewis Hamilton, seeing an F1 car without one can feel almost uncomfortable. That might be one of the clearest examples of Formula 1 proving its audience wrong.

There were other answers too. Some fans who disliked Sebastian Vettel during his dominant Red Bull years eventually came to appreciate his personality, knowledge of F1 history and interests beyond racing. Others changed their minds about refueling after realizing how much fuel loads dictated strategy and performance.

Valtteri Bottas became far more popular for some after leaving Mercedes and showing more of his personality. Even Lawson has experienced a perception shift. A driver who could appear abrasive through the selective storytelling of Drive to Survive has increasingly developed a reputation among fans as a much more relaxed and personable figure outside the car. And then there is Williams.

Some fans once believed Vowles would quickly bring the team back toward the front. Others now think the scale of Williams’ outdated infrastructure meant that expectation was unrealistic from the beginning. That debate is nowhere near settled.

Which makes Sainz’s new contract fascinating.

This Weekend Could Change Some Opinions Too

Formula 1 fans are exceptionally good at forming definitive conclusions from incomplete information.

Lawson wasn’t ready for Red Bull. Tsunoda’s F1 career was over. Williams was rebuilding.

Williams’ rebuild wasn’t working. Sainz deserved another top-team opportunity. Sainz was never getting another top-team opportunity.

Then Hadjar hurts his wrist and suddenly Lawson is driving a Red Bull again, Tsunoda is back at Racing Bulls and the entire driver-market conversation gets another unexpected subplot. At the same time, Sainz has apparently decided that rather than waiting indefinitely for a hypothetical opening at another front-running team, he is willing to attach his future to Williams — provided the reported €30 million annual salary is anywhere near accurate. Maybe Williams eventually gives him a car capable of fighting near the front and the contract looks inspired.

Maybe Lawson’s second Red Bull stint goes dramatically better than the first. Maybe Tsunoda produces the result that sends F1 social media into complete meltdown. Or maybe none of those things happen.

If today’s biggest fan discussion teaches us anything, it is that being completely certain about Formula 1 is usually just the first step toward eventually discovering you were wrong.