There is and it should be obvious to everyone.

Not to me, not based on his race performance at McLaren and then at AT before crashing (again: the crash and the resulting injury are his fault).

Liam will continue to wait

That's how they lost Sainz and Albon...

I’m not trying to argue that any of this is the right thing to do

You argued that "it should be obvious to everyone" why Ricciardo deserves a race seat in F1 and he just doesn't. He had two seasons at McLaren, including one whole car reset with the 2022 rules. In 2021 he had one very good race but Nyck De Vries also had one very good race.

There is the unlikely but not completely outlandish chance that Lawson will overtake Tsunoda in championship points in the next race weekend. Tsunoda has 3, Lawson has 2.