Horner reveals Lawson's last sacrificial act for Red Bull

Christian Horner has revealed how what can now be viewed as Liam Lawson's last act for Red Bull could have a significant impact on the team's bid to overcome its struggles with its car this year.

Following a meeting of Red Bull's senior management in Dubai on Tuesday, it is known Lawson will be replaced by Yuki Tsunoda for the upcoming Japanese Grand Prix.

Red Bull has decided to replace Lawson after just two races as team-mate to Max Verstappen following his failure to adapt to the RB21, which even the four-time F1 champion has endured problems with so far this year given its lack of balance.

After failing to make it out of Q1 for either the Australian and Chinese Grands Prix, qualifying slowest for the latter, Red Bull opted to switch Lawson to a pit lane start at the Shanghai International Circuit.

In doing so, Red Bull overhauled the car, which Lawson dragged to a 12th-place finish, albeit only after three drivers ahead of him - Ferrari duo Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, and Alpine's Pierre Gasly - had been disqualified.

Lawson's drive, though, his last for Red Bull, was not in vain. 

"We made the decision to take him off the grid, out of parc fermé to try some radical changes on the set-up because you're so limited in testing with these cars," Horner explained to Sky Sports F1.

"So it made sense to say, 'Okay, we're starting at the back. Let's try and learn something out of today'. We've done that. We got 56 laps worth of information with a radically different setup on the car.

"That gives huge information back into the factory, back into the system, as we're looking to improve our performance in the forthcoming races."

A glimmer of hope for Red Bull

Horner was at least encouraged by what he saw in China from Verstappen's performance on the hard tyre.

Pirelli has altered significantly its C2 compound for this year, but which had barely been tested in the lead-up to its use for the majority of the race on Sunday.

Offering a light at the end of the tunnel in terms of performance, Horner added: "That first stint was where we gave away all the time.

"Max came in for the pit stop 18 seconds behind [race winner] Oscar [Piastri], and at the chequered flag he was 16 seconds behind, so on the hard tyre we were pretty competitive.

"We need to understand. Maybe we overcompensated based on the degradation we saw [in the sprint]. For sure, we need to find a bit more pace, then life is easier. A fourth-place finish [for Verstappen] but we know we've still plenty to do."