How Tsunoda has shown the maturity he needs to secure his F1 future

Yuki Tsunoda says he has reconciled himself to being beaten by Liam Lawson in the race to the seat alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull – an admission he is perhaps moving towards to dispel the doubts Red Bull’s decision makers still hold about him.

Sitting alongside new Racing Bulls team-mate Isack Hadjar, team principal Laurent Mekies and CEO Peter Bayer in a press conference ahead of the F175 season launch at London’s O2 Arena, Tsunoda was speaking to an international audience for the first time since learning that Lawson had been chosen ahead of him. It was a measure of how pressing an issue his immediate future is that this subject was the second question, beaten to pole position only by a snarky enquiry about the team’s latest name change.

Tsunoda, no doubt sensing the inevitability of this line of questioning, did not look altogether happy to be there. Indeed, his demeanour called to mind a venerable PG Wodehouse quote: “A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life’s gas pipe with a lighted candle.”

Nevertheless, his answer was suitably phlegmatic. He had seen the decision coming and was prepared for it.

“I already kind of parked it away from my head,” he said. “The moment they [Red Bull] officially announced [Lawson], I didn’t actually feel super-super angry or disappointed. Maybe I was prepared at some point.”

The point in question was probably the very moment his long-rumoured test in a Red Bull car was announced last year, late and in a somewhat perfunctory fashion, as if it had already taken on the status of consolation prize in a TV quiz show, with Christian Horner as the host with a palliative hand on his shoulder: “Let’s see what you would have won…”

Tsunoda was determined to apply a positive spin. His next utterance was a variety of word salad as he tried to suggest that remaining part of the Red Bull family was still “a pretty cool project”. The fact that it took him three halting attempts to get the team’s current name right before gamely plugging on with the rest of his sentence was illuminating.

This is a team which is now on its third different title since Tsunoda got his break there in 2021, and the fluidity of its nomenclature has run in parallel with the larger Red Bull organisation’s uncertainty over what its role should be. Junior-driver prep school? Fashion brand? No identity at all apart from a clunking acronym, the product of some car-crash in the marketing department between a bank app and the team’s non-name?

Tsunoda even joked about this when pitched a question regarding his need to find another team if there’s no place for him at Red Bull’s senior team in 2026: “I don’t know, maybe this team changes its name again next year and it’s a different team!”

The reality for Tsunoda is that he is already on borrowed time, since three seasons is historically as much as a Red Bull junior gets before Dr Helmut Marko, the organisation’s “driver advisor”, hits the ejector switch. 2025 will be Tsunoda’s fifth, which is indicative of many factors: the need to keep Honda on side; the absence of suitable replacement candidates as Red Bull’s feeder pipe stutters; and the indubitable fact that he was fast-tracked through European single-seater racing.

Maturity – or lack thereof – has long been cited as the principal reason for Tsunoda being passed over. And while there are those who say he has been making process in this regard, apparent evidence to the contrary keeps popping up in the form of erratic behaviour on track and peculiar rants over the team radio.

It’s said that Marko still holds out some hope – but Honda’s move to Aston Martin from 2026 removes an important reason for keeping Tsunoda in the mix. Tsunoda also believes that he can build a case to stay on: “I would love to be part of this team, I’m going to stick to what I’m doing. I understand why they chose Liam. It is what it is. There are things I can’t control… I just need to keep focused on what I’m doing, prove myself more.”

Yuki Tsunoda, RB F1 Team

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

All the greatest sportspeople grasp the importance of understanding the difference between what is and isn’t controllable, and focusing on what you can control. Absorbing the reasons Red Bull chose Lawson over him – after much dither and delay – represents a very powerful change in his mindset.

If Tsunoda can spend this season doing just that – maximising his own potential and demonstrating it, rather than waiting with increasing impatience for a decision which may never come – he is on the way to becoming a more complete driver.

Getting the better of Hadjar will be an important measure, but Tsunoda has already seen off Nyck de Vries and Daniel Ricciardo with no reward. Plus Arvid Lindblad, Red Bull’s next big hope, has been promoted to Formula 2 this season and will be knocking on the door.

Perhaps, despite his manifest determination to stay in the family, Tsunoda would be better rewarded if he invested some of the time afforded to him this season in looking for alternatives.

As he says himself in his own unique idiom: “So, yeah, whatever happens, you know, there can be interesting options…”