Seven videogame characters who wouldn’t last a full season in Red Bull’s second seat

We may be enduring the eerie lull of the Formula One winter break, but behind the scenes, the great DRS train is getting its buffers polished ready for another slightly-too-long season.

Plans are being hatched in team headquarters. How should we quietly break Lewis Hamilton’s heart this time, Ferrari are wondering. What is the legal limit of sponsor mentions in our team name, enquires Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber Audi. Most intriguingly of all is the big question at Red Bull Racing: how many drivers should we sack in 2026?

While we have every feasible digit crossed that young Isack Hadjar gets a chance to prove his obvious talents, everybody’s seen just how low and precarious the sword of Damocles dangles over Red Bull’s second seat. Whatever happens, these game characters wouldn’t even make it to the European races before being booted out towards a Super Formula gig.

Mourning your dead horse are you, Arthur? What’s the matter, gonna cry? Gonna do a big boo hoo into your hands? Well, your blubbing just cost you a chance to finish P12 in the F1 driver’s championship, because there’s no room for expressions of human emotion in this seat.

Then again, with Helmut Marko having stepped down from his role after 20 years at Red Bull, Arthur might be permitted a few more millilitres of eye juice than Isack Hajdar was before facing public ridicule.

If Captain Walker had simply followed the evacuation order he receives at the start of harrowing third-person shooter Spec Ops: The Line, we’d have been in for a frankly boring few hours of marshalling civilians out of buildings and cordoning off air strike zones. As it happens, Walker elects to ignore team orders (the team in this case being the US army) and much gruesome chaos ensues. Not very lovely at all. 

He’s undoubtedly quick. No one’s questioning that. But young Ryan McKane is also headstrong, and on a deeply personal mission to avenge his father. That emotion simply doesn’t interface with the role of Red Bull’s second driver, who must acclimate to a car that Alex Albon once described thusly: “If you bump up the sensitivity [on a computer game] completely to the max and you move that mouse and it’s just darting across the screen everywhere, that’s kind of how it feels.”

Rebellious by nature, Mr Pearce hates authority and we simply can’t see him leading Max out on a quali lap to give him a tow down the Baku straight. Plus, he’d probably hack the car so that DRS was always enabled or something. A nightmare signing who would have Red Bull up in front of the stewards constantly.

Bowser is a lot of things: fast, giant, aggressive, and imbued with a champion’s killer instinct. On the downside, it’s never been said of the megalomaniacal fire-breathing turtle that he’s a team player, nor especially likeable.

The PR team would be on constant edge during Bowser’s post session interviews, whispering things like “don’t mention all the kidnappings”. Sponsors would be ready to pull their support after he sets even one fellow competitor on fire. We simply can’t see this working past the summer break.

When presented with a giant corporation that hides its insidious nature through the use of bright primary colours, she sets about taking it down. And that’s going to be a problem for Faith when entering the Red Bull young driver program. Frankly we can’t see her even getting to RB before her funding’s pulled.

Hand on heart, you know it’s true. You’ve seen the number of front wings you go through. You’d bankrupt them in damage costs alone. And we’ve heard the filth that comes out of your mouth in online lobbies. Tsk. Up to the steward’s office with you, potty mouth.