Even Red Bull cannot explain some of my problems

Yuki Tsunoda has been struggling since his promotion to Red Bull Racing, picking up just nine points since making the step-up. The Japanese driver is now under pressure, and Helmut Marko has named the Mexican Grand Prix at the end of October as a reference point – meaning the next three race weekends will be ‘crucial’, according to Tsunoda. 

Isack Hadjar currently stands on pole-position for promotion to the senior team in 2026 and Tsunoda himself did not rule out a return to Racing Bulls while speaking to the media ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.  

He knows the main area of improvement: race pace. Tsunoda has made progress on Saturdays and managed to reach Q3 in Monza – which Red Bull expects of him – but over a full race distance the situation looks much more worrying. The picture is somewhat the opposite of many of Max Verstappen’s previous team-mates: Sergio Perez struggled more on Saturdays compared to the four-time world champion, while the gap in race pace was (slightly) smaller than over a single flying lap. 

“I need to focus on the long runs, especially for now,” the Red Bull racer explained in Baku. “In Monza, I had a bit of damage, but as a team we also work hard to understand what’s the main issue causing the long run pace. The things that we experience are things that even the team can’t really explain. That’s the main thing.  

“In terms of the short runs, I’m very happy with it. I think the team is very happy as well. It’s clear that I’m showing race by race that I’m getting close to Max, even though there’s package difference,” Tsunoda points out, referring to the fact that he had to drive with an older floor specification in most races. “I was consistently two tenths behind Max in qualifying, apart from Q3. I think that’s definitely showing well and definitely people in the team are noticing this.” 

Three tenths per lap in damage at Monza 

Sundays, however, often tell a very different story, as was the case in Monza – where he finished eighty seconds behind race winner Verstappen, damage included. 

“What I heard is that the damage was less than three tenths per lap, but as I said, we were struggling anyway. Myself, I was struggling with the things that even the team couldn’t explain, and we tried to sort out those issues,” Tsunoda added.  

The issues forced Tsunoda to experiment with set-up more than he would have liked.  

“We had to kind of cure those things with the balance, which was not ideal because I was happy with the balance we had,” he said. “But somehow the tyres were wearing like crazy. Until FP3, what we tried was to find out what was causing the tyre wear issue, but we couldn’t find it, so we just had to adjust the balance. In a way I didn’t like that, and obviously it was just taking so much performance from the car.” 

That immediately explains why Tsunoda can still be reasonably competitive over one lap – when he can fully exploit the Pirelli tyres – but has enormous difficulty keeping the tyres alive over a full stint. 

“I’m just lacking in the long runs. We are working really hard, both from my side and also from the team’s side, to put everything together in the long runs. Maybe there are some things that you can’t explain, but I try a lot of things to make it work and enjoy this process.”