Max Verstappen has a perfectly good stand-in team mate sitting right next to him this weekend, a low-drag Monza straight practically begging for a slipstream, and energy rules that make towing more valuable than it has been in years. And yet the four-time champion wants none of it. Ask him about using Liam Lawson to help his qualifying lap and the answer is blunt: he simply doesn’t play that game.
Red Bull has already confirmed Lawson will again deputise for Isack Hadjar, who is still nursing the wrist injury that ruled him out of Zandvoort, with Verstappen also sitting out FP1 this weekend as Ayumu Iwasa takes the wheel. That much is settled. What is not settled, and what Verstappen was pressed on during Thursday’s media day, is whether Red Bull might use its spare body to help its number one get pole.
Why Monza Makes the Tow Question Worth Asking
Slipstreaming used to be a Monza staple, drivers queuing up on the pit straight like commuters waiting for a bus, each one trying to get a run off the car in front before their own flying lap. It faded as the aerodynamic and energy trade-offs shifted, clean air becoming more valuable than the draft in most conditions. Monza, though, has always been the exception, and this year’s regulations are set to make it more of one.
The FIA has capped harvesting at 5 MJ in qualifying and 7 MJ in the race at the Temple of Speed, a genuinely stingy allowance on a track that lives and dies by straight-line speed. Follow a car closely enough and the energy maths changes in your favour: lower speeds through the tow mean less battery deployment is needed to match the car ahead, leaving more in the tank to fire elsewhere on the lap. In theory, that should turn Q3 into a game of chicken, with drivers backing off and queuing for a tow rather than simply setting a time.
Verstappen isn’t convinced it will get as messy as some expect, but he isn’t ruling out closer racing than usual either.
“Not sure within a second, [but] maybe a bit closer than what you have seen in the last few years. It’s also so easy to put yourself in a s****y place on track. We’ve seen it a few years ago, when it was a big mess.” – Max Verstappen
No Interest in Playing Games
That wariness extends to how Verstappen wants his own team to operate. Having Lawson on hand, a driver with nothing to lose in the championship and every incentive to help the senior man in the sister car, is exactly the kind of scenario where teams sometimes get creative with strategy. Verstappen, told the media including RacingNews365, wants no part of it.
“Honestly, I just think with what we are doing at the moment, I’m not really looking for that; I just want to do my laps and try and get the car in a good window.” – Max Verstappen
Pushed on whether he had considered asking Lawson to sacrifice his own Q3 lap purely to give Verstappen a tow, the answer was even more direct.
“Honestly, no, I haven’t really thought about that. If you’re fighting in a championship battle, or you really try and do something special… but they [the team] want two cars trying to do well, but let’s see. I never ask things to the team, and I leave it up to them for these kinds of things. I think that’s best.” – Max Verstappen
There’s a version of this quote that sounds like sporting integrity, and there’s a version that sounds like a driver 130 points off the championship lead quietly accepting that team orders games are for people actually fighting for something. Kimi Antonelli leads the standings on 242 points, with Verstappen down in sixth on 112. Asking your stand-in team mate to burn his own race just to shave a tenth off a qualifying lap makes a lot more sense when there’s a title on the line than when there isn’t.
Realistic Expectations All Round
None of this is happening in isolation from Verstappen’s own admission, made to formula1.com, that Red Bull needs to be “realistic” about its Monza pace after a Zandvoort weekend that ended with him crashing out on the opening lap of his home race while battling illness. He has won at Monza before, but this season has been a different story, and he isn’t pretending otherwise heading into a track he describes as “already going to be very complex” thanks to the energy rules alone.
Lawson, for his part, only found out on Wednesday that he’d be driving the RB22 again rather than his usual Racing Bulls machine, a late call that left him juggling simulator prep for two very different cars. He’s already described the two cars as different “everywhere” bar the power unit, which makes the idea of him playing a scripted supporting role in qualifying feel even less likely. He has enough on his plate just adapting.
What Verstappen’s comments really confirm is that Red Bull isn’t currently a team playing chess with its second car, because there’s no title fight to justify the risk. Whether that stance survives contact with a genuinely close Q3 on Saturday is another matter entirely. Qualifying at Monza starts at 14:00 UTC on Saturday, check the calendar for your local time, and if the midfield starts queuing for tows behind him, don’t be surprised if Verstappen’s principles get tested in real time.
