It seems almost unfathomable for a title contender’s team-mate to end up 17th in the Formula 1 drivers’ standings, yet that’s what happened to Yuki Tsunoda alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull in 2025.
In a way, it was unprecedented – the closest modern example perhaps was Felipe Massa lying a lowly 16th eight rounds into the 2012 season while Ferrari team-mate Fernando Alonso comfortably led the championship, but the Brazilian somewhat turned the situation around.
Equally, Tsunoda’s case was unique. Having decided to release an underperforming Sergio Perez, Red Bull picked Liam Lawson over Tsunoda for a 2025 promotion, believing the New Zealander’s lack of experience would be offset by his allegedly higher potential.
Lawson didn’t get much time to prove himself. After two grands prix in which he was eliminated in Q1 and failed to score any points, he was sent right back to Racing Bulls, with Tsunoda finally getting his chance at the main team.
At the time, the Japanese was actually quite bullish about his odds of succeeding where so many others had failed.
“People often say Red Bull cars tend to have strong front-end grip. I personally love cars that turn aggressively, and in the past, I adapted my driving style to that kind of set-up,” Tsunoda said ahead of his Red Bull debut.
Liam Lawson, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool
“Racing Bulls traditionally had cars that understeered a bit more, which was challenging for me at first, but I got used to it, and it eventually became my norm. Now, the key will be adjusting to Red Bull’s characteristics again, but considering my past experience, I’m not too worried about it.”
Perhaps he should have been. While Verstappen won eight grands prix – more than anyone, including 2025 champion Lando Norris – Tsunoda failed to take a single podium finish, with his highest result an underwhelming sixth in Baku; he scored 30 points to his team-mate’s 385 over their time together.
In 27 qualifying sessions (sprints included), Tsunoda made it to Q3 eight times, was out in Q2 on nine occasions, and was eliminated as early as Q1 on 10 occurrences. He outqualified his team-mate just once and was 0.6s slower on average.
So, what was the problem with Red Bull’s RB21 F1 car? To some extent, Tsunoda remains at a loss to explain it.
“Normally I’m able to understand the car, what I’m driving, what kind of characteristic,” Tsunoda detailed on the Beyond The Grid podcast, “but it feels like even after Abu Dhabi, I didn’t know what kind of car I was driving. I still don’t understand what was the issue and what things made me very struggle to learn about this car and get used to the car.
“I thought confidence was there, but some race I just somehow lost the confidence. I still don’t understand the car, to be honest.”
Yuki Tsunoda, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Mark Thompson / Getty Images
Still, Tsunoda has fascinating insight to provide. He openly admits he refrained from tweaking his driving style, believing that’s just what works for him. However, he did end up trying out Verstappen’s set-ups – and that experiment just failed.
“One thing about myself: I have big enough ego to not change my driving style,” Tsunoda admitted. “I know what I’m doing in terms of driving and I believe in myself. So, I never try to change my driving style to another driver’s, even though the driver is competitive and fast.
“Obviously for Max, it’s a different case. He’s a world champion, he proves a lot of things and I still learn a lot of things from his driving.
“My core driving is the same. And at some time, probably the first year out of any years since I started, I thought about changing driving style and trying to do something similar to Max. But in my perspective, if I just look at data, I didn’t really see a huge difference in terms of driving.
“What I did most – and what I think now was the biggest mistake last year – was to try to replicate the set-up, what he’s doing; even knowing that sometimes, if I feel the car very oversteer, Max’s [set-up] in theory makes the car worse, more sensitive in the direction change, or makes the car slide more.
“I tend to choose the set-up, even though I’m already struggling with oversteer. It can happen sometimes the opposite way as well: even though I’m struggling with understeer, his car is more understeer. I try to replicate that.”
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Yuki Tsunoda, Red Bull Racing Team
Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images
Tsunoda is not the first driver to unsuccessfully attempt to use Verstappen’s set-up. Alex Albon also struggled alongside the Dutchman, for a year and a half, in 2019-20.
Back in 2023, the Anglo-Thai reminisced in the High Performance Podcast: “[Verstappen] has quite a unique driving style, it’s not that easy to get along with. Everyone has a driving style; I would say my driving style is a bit more on the smooth side, but I like a car that has a good front end, so quite sharp, quite direct. Max does too, but his level of sharp and direct is a whole different level – it’s eye-wateringly sharp.
“To give people kind of maybe an explanation of what that might feel like, 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. It becomes so sharp that it makes you a little bit tense.”
This metaphor was brought up to Tsunoda, but he wasn’t convinced it was particularly relevant to the RB21. Asked if he could relate, the Japanese racer said: “Yes and no. First, the car is a lot different to when Alex was driving and I’ve never driven Alex’s car.
“It’s sensitive, but I didn’t feel that sensitive. But at the same time, like I said, it was very up and down. Some tracks I’m driving more sensitive car than him, some tracks he was driving more sensitive. On average, probably he was driving a bit more sensitive car, more like a sharper car than me.
“What he was definitely better at was, even though the car was sensitive or even numb… In a corner, there’s always one phase or one moment that the car naturally reacts to, or tries to kind of respect its own behaviour. You know what I mean? Like, always in the corner, as soon as I turn in or whatever, that car does its own thing. That can be like a sensitive, sharp rotation or, I don’t know, the front slides or something. He’s able to use that and he can smell that kind of behaviour probably much faster than me. And he was able to maximise that kind of behaviour throughout the corner.
“It’s not necessarily my driving style that I’m doing, but if I have that kind of moments, sharp turn-in or rotation or the front slide, I tend to force the car how I want to drive. I normally respect how the car wants to drive through the corner, or I’m able to use that kind of natural behaviour from the car. But I wasn’t able to use that ability much in the Red Bull.”
Yuki Tsunoda, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images
As soon as he first drove the RB21 in free practice at Suzuka, Tsunoda’s early optimism gave way to caution; he reported the car was “feeling a bit more tricky” than on the simulator.
With hindsight, it was a sign of the ordeal to come.
“Even though I said, yeah, I thought I had confidence, probably it was not enough, as much as the VCARB car that I drove for four years,” Tsunoda said. “Red Bull is still a car that was completely different, which I felt as soon as I stepped into that car in Suzuka.
“There’s some confidence level I was able to build up, but to maximise that whole performance, I think that was probably something I was missing, and trying to find that confidence throughout the year.”
Tsunoda eventually found out in Qatar, at the penultimate round of the season, that he would not be retained as a race driver and would act as a reserve in 2026 – no huge surprise given his results, and the campaign had been so draining that the news actually was a relief to him.
“I still remember the moments,” he recounted. “Initially, what I got told was from Helmut [Marko, then Red Bull’s motorsport advisor].
“In the end, Helmut is the person that brought me into Formula 1, brought me even to the Red Bull junior programme. We were together since when I was 17, 18. I remember he was also pretty disappointed about that.
Yuki Tsunoda, Red Bull Racing, Helmut Marko, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Mark Thompson – Getty Images
“And when I got told, I still remember, I didn’t feel that much of huge disappointment or devastated feeling.
“Obviously I was still disappointed and pretty sad that I’m not driving next year. But not as I expected because I don’t know why, somehow in a way, I fought really hard. I fought more than ever in that 2025 year and even if I look back now, I don’t have much regret. I gave everything.
“In a way, honestly, my heart was just saying, ‘Okay, now I can be relaxed’. Because it was so stressful, the second half of the 2025 season, where I fought hard with a lot of pressure. Like I was never able to kind of breathe out much.”
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– The Autosport.com Team
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