After two Grands Prix and one Sprint race, Red Bull Racing is not where it expected to be. Max Verstappen sits second in the Drivers’ Championship with 36 points, just eight behind McLaren’s Lando Norris. But the team is third in the constructors’ standings, already 42 points behind McLaren.

The biggest worry, though, is Liam Lawson. The young Kiwi is yet to score a single point. He crashed out in Australia and finished only 15th in China, after starting from the pit lane and qualifying last for both the Sprint and the main race.

Because of this poor start, Red Bull has called for an emergency meeting as confirmed by the team's motorsport advisor Helmut Marko after the Chinese Grand Prix.

“This week there is a meeting in Milton Keynes to discuss when and how we can close the gap,” he told Sky Germany. “Until then, it’s about scoring as many points as possible. We are worried, but it is not like we are throwing in the towel.”

Lawson has had a tough start to life at Red Bull. He’s raced on two tracks he had never driven before, and in both cases, he was knocked out in the first part of qualifying. In Australia, he crashed out in the middle of a rainstorm. In China, the team made changes to the car that meant starting from the pit lane. A two-stop strategy didn’t help, and although he finished the race, he was far from the points again.

The team is also looking at what went wrong for Verstappen in Shanghai. He dropped places at the start and didn’t have much pace in the first stint. “We lost the race with the first set of mediums,” Marko said. “With a successful start, without losing two places and with more speed in the first stint, we could have finished on the podium.”

With rumours growing about a possible driver change, Yuki Tsunoda has already said he is “100%” ready to step up from the next race in Japan if needed and Red Bull hasn’t ruled anything out.