Racing Bulls have a genuine shot at finishing in the top half of the constructors’ championship this year, for the first time in their 40-year history.

However their chances of pulling that off were not helped by the disruption to their driver line-up just two races into the season. The loss of the experienced Yuki Tsunoda meant their driver pairing at the third round of the championship had started just 14 grands prix between them.

Nonetheless rookie Isack Hadjar and the returning Liam Lawson have done well for the team given their lack of experience. Despite his brief stint at Red Bull’s top team, Lawson was no more familiar with many of the venues F1 visited over the opening months of the championship than his rookie team mate.

Being kicked out of Red Bull after just two appearances for them cannot have helped Lawson’s state of mind either. But even making that allowance for him, Hadjar has clearly been the more impressive of the two drivers.

The younger driver has generally maintained the same edge over Lawson on one-lap pace since the season began. This has served him well in the congested midfield, where even hundredths of a second often translates to several places on the grid.

Thanks to those stronger qualifying performances, Hadjar became a regular among the points finishers for a while. Following his painful non-start in Australia he lined up on the fourth row for the next two races and bagged his first points at Suzuka. In Jeddah – where he started behind Lawson for once – he did a fine job to claim the final point, aided by an early pass on Fernando Alonso.

Lawson went through a rough spell when he returned to Red Bull’s junior team, picking up a handful of penalties. It took him until the eighth round of the championship to finally get some points on the board.

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He can draw confidence from his performance in Austria where he matched his team mate’s best result to date with sixth place. Hadjar’s came in the strange circumstances of the two-mandatory-stop Monaco Grand Prix, aided by his team mate backing the field up for him; Lawson capitalised on various drivers’ misfortunes in Austria.

Silverstone was a missed opportunity for both drivers: Lawson’s early qualifying exit left himself vulnerable to a first-lap incident, while Hadjar blindly crashing into Andrea Kimi Antonelli. There’s room for both drivers to improve in the season half of the season.

Hadjar looks like the obvious candidate for a promotion to Red Bull’s top team. But given what Lawson and Tsunoda experienced there, it’s debatable whether he would be better off staying where he is.

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Unrepresentative comparisons omitted. Negative value: Hadjar was faster; Positive value: Lawson was faster

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