The next time Red Bull decide which drivers get into a Formula 1 car, Helmut Marko will not be the one calling it. The long-time motorsport advisor is leaving at the end of the year, and the first real test of what comes after him has landed on the junior team’s 2027 lineup.

Racing Bulls have three contracted Red Bull drivers chasing two seats: Lawson, who held the car together in a midfield fight, Lindblad in his rookie year, and Tsolov, the Bulgarian Formula 2 title contender currently second in that championship.

Team principal Alan Permane has not set a public deadline. “I don’t want to give you a definite date. It’s going to be in the coming weeks, let’s say. I mean, we’re in no rush,” he told reporters, as reported by Crash. His summary of the problem was simpler: “three doesn’t fit into two, of course.”

Who actually signs it off

The authority has moved. BBC F1 correspondent Andrew Benson wrote that the decision now sits with Red Bull shareholders Chalerm Yoovidhya and Mark Mateschitz, with chief executive Oliver Mintzlaff running the Formula 1 program, as reported by World Today News. It is the first time in Red Bull’s two decades in Formula 1 that a seat call at the junior team has not been Marko’s to make.

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That matters because the Marko and Christian Horner era had a template. Promising rookies arrived, were paired with other promising rookies, and the ones who did not deliver quickly were dropped. Pierre Gasly, Daniil Kvyat, Alex Albon and Nyck de Vries all passed through that mill.

The Benson argument: Keep the baseline

Benson has argued for a less abrupt approach: Keep Lawson and Lindblad together for another year, and park Tsolov as reserve with simulator time and testing in older machinery.

The logic is a benchmark. Lawson has been consistently quicker than Lindblad in qualifying and races, which gives the new management a known yardstick to measure what Lindblad actually is before promoting him higher. Replacing Lawson with Tsolov would mean two unproven drivers again, and no reference point.

Tsolov’s F2 case

Tsolov is not an outside bet. He sits second in the Formula 2 standings on 200 points, seven behind Rafael Câmara after the Baku round in late September. He has already completed a Formula 1 test for Racing Bulls.

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Permane has publicly placed him in the queue. The team principal called Tsolov “next in line” for a Racing Bulls promotion earlier this month, while noting the Bulgarian had adapted quickly to F1 machinery on his test debut.

Lawson, for his part, is making his own case on the track. Asked about his situation after the Singapore Grand Prix, he said he was “very, very happy that the team has made all the right decisions ultimately through these last few weeks”, with Racing Bulls now past 100 points in the constructors’ standings.

Permane has said the call will come in the coming weeks.

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