After sending Sergio Perez off as expected, within a day his successor was named. It is none other than Liam Lawson. Christian Horner has revealed what made him decide in his favour over Yuki Tsunoda.
It was a very minimal difference, the decision was very close, in the end Lawson won due to his better race pace:
"It was an extremely close decision because Yuki is a very fast driver. He already has a lot of experience over many seasons, he had an exceptional performance in the tyre test in Abu Dhabi, the engineers are still praising him for what they saw there. But when we compared his data with Liam's, we noticed that his data is better than Tsunoda's, especially in terms of race pace. Their qualifying results are almost identical, but there is no denying that Lawson only has 11 races under his belt, he will definitely get much better and stronger over time.
"He's mentally strong, he has a great capacity to handle pressure, but the most important thing will be not to put too much pressure on him. He has to face the best driver of his generation, but the best thing he can do is completely ignore what's happening with Max Verstappen and focus solely on his task and his development. If he does that, then he'll be fine!" - said Christian Horner.
