What Tsunoda must do to become a success at Red Bull

The man himself frames it as fate. After an often frustrating four-year Formula 1 apprenticeship with Red Bull’s junior team, during which the prospect of promotion diminished and then seemed to vanish entirely, Yuki Tsunoda is now where he thinks he always should have been.

Trouble is, that’s what the driver he is replacing thought. And the one before him. And – rinse and repeat.

Being Max Verstappen’s team-mate is among the toughest gigs in F1, especially when coupled with the need to get to grips with a difficult car. And, while the casualty list indicates that it’s the car which is the problem rather than the people driving it, the reality is the second driver will always carry the can if Verstappen is the only one racking up the points.

Tsunoda’s job is to help fix the car, bolster his team-mate’s drivers’ title ambitions, and reboot Red Bull’s constructors’ championship campaign. If he can’t do that, Red Bull will replace him with someone who can.

To keep his seat, then, he’ll have to do a lot more than just allow team principal Christian Horner to win at board games…

1. Learn how to get the RB21 ‘in the window’ – fast

When the flag drops, the you-know-what stops.

For all that Tsunoda has made confident noises about his experience of the RB21 in the simulator, saying he “didn’t find the car that difficult to drive”, reality is likely to present a stark difference. Verstappen himself says the RB21 is bothersome – and Liam Lawson’s failure to wrangle results from it is the reason for Tsunoda getting this opportunity in the first place.

Both Verstappen and Lawson have spoken of the RB21’s painfully narrow operating ‘window’, of inconsistent balance changes from corner to corner, and of the difficulty in managing tyre performance given its penchant for snap oversteer. While the engineering team’s mandate with this car was to trade off some peak performance to make it more benign than its predecessor, the experience of the first two grands prix this season suggests its peak remains challenging to access.

Sergio Perez, ejected last year in favour of Lawson, would frequently explain that as he made the RB20 more “comfortable” – i.e. less edgy – to drive, he would become slower. What Verstappen can do, and his number-twos haven’t, is lean on the front axle progressively enough through corners to avoid provoking the rear – and if you look at his in-car footage from any given track session you’ll see even he doesn’t get it right every time.

It was the lack of consistency from one corner to the next, and that tendency to snap into oversteer with no warning growl if the driver turned in slightly too aggressively, which killed Perez’s confidence and did the same to Lawson. If a four-time world champion is finding a car a handful, pity the merely ordinary driver in the garage next door.

For this reason, it’s wrong to expect Tsunoda to be faster than Lawson just because he achieved better results in the Racing Bulls car in Australia and China. And wrong, bordering on fatuous, to conclude that the RB21 is somehow inferior and relies upon Verstappen magic to run at or near the front.

Yuki Tsunoda, RB F1 Team

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Racing Bulls has a more benign car whose performance peaks are therefore easier to access; it’s clear from Verstappen’s speed through demanding corners that the RB21 has more downforce. Red Bull’s problem is that only he can locate the sweet spot.

The Chinese Grand Prix revealed another troublesome quirk. Setting aside Lawson’s miserable race – he was trying a ‘radical’ set-up change which made the car even worse – Verstappen was a thoroughly anonymous presence in the opening stint, falling off the leading group.

The RB21 came alive on the C2s used for the first time in his second stint. It’s not unusual for cars to respond differently to an alternate compound, but this was a marked reversal.

All in all, Tsunoda has a lot to learn in a very short space of time. “My priority is to first understand the car, how it behaves compared to the VCARB,” he said last weekend. “If I can naturally enjoy driving it as I get familiar with it in FP1, then the results will follow.”

Seldom has the use of the word “if” come freighted with so many assumptions. He cannot afford to underestimate the magnitude of the challenge he faces.

2. Manage expectations

Yuki Tsunoda at the Red Bull Showrun Taichung

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Floating the possibility of finishing on the podium in his first race with Red Bull was perhaps not the wisest course of action Tsunoda has undertaken. Naturally there will be a great deal of scrutiny and expectation attending his maiden race outing for Red Bull in Japan this weekend – but, given the fate of his predecessors, he would do well to manage those expectations rather than inflate them.

It’s said that you can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter. This, in a nutshell, is Tsunoda’s mission at Red Bull – the team’s senior stakeholders felt that his greater F1 experience relative to Lawson’s could prove helpful in debugging the RB21.

You can ignore the platitudinous chat about Lawson’s welfare in last week’s statement from team boss Christian Horner. Red Bull isn’t a team which throws a comforting arm around the shoulder of a struggling driver – it’s one of the most hard-headed organisations on the grid.

Tsunoda has been moved across to do a job and his public pronouncements need to reflect that. Some of the quotes attributed to Lawson over the off-season made him sound a little cocky and Tsunoda can – should – learn from the speed with which Lawson’s confidence departed.

Helmut Marko has said Tsunoda is in for the rest of the season. That’s quite a statement from the man whose fingers are usually the itchiest on the trigger.

Lawson wasn’t given the time he needed to adapt to the car. Clearly the team felt this point lay too far in the future for its liking, hence his rapid firing.

What Tsunoda needs to do is be realistic about the timescales involved – both in his public pronouncements and behind closed doors – and ensure his goals are specific, measurable and attainable.

3. Build a working relationship with his new race engineer

Engineer Richard Wood alongside Sergio Perez in 2024

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

The well-documented challenges of finding a workable set-up for the RB21 place more emphasis on what is already an important factor in car performance: the relationship between the driver and their race engineer. Red Bull has confirmed to Autosport that Tsunoda will be working with Richard Wood, who stepped up this year after working as Perez’s performance engineer.

Although Wood is relatively new to the role, he was not seen as part of Lawson’s problem. As an established element of the Red Bull set-up, he will be able to help Tsunoda adapt to the way the team operates.

As evinced by the brouhaha surrounding Lewis Hamilton’s radio exchanges with his new Ferrari race engineer Riccardo Adami, it can take time for the relationship to gel, and for each of the parties to understand what the other wants and how to communicate it. But Tsunoda has recent experience of change in this department – his long-time engineer Mattia Spini was promoted last summer and replaced as Tsunoda’s engineer by Ernesto Desiderio.

4. Know when to keep his mouth shut

Yuki Tsunoda at the Red Bull Showrun Taichung

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

It’s understood that Lawson’s immediate proximity to Tsunoda’s pace when he replaced Daniel Ricciardo at Red Bull’s junior team late last year was what swung the decision to slot him into the seat vacated by Perez. Red Bull management’s belief at the time was that he had more scope for improvement than Tsunoda and was more mentally resilient.

The popular view that Tsunoda’s tendency to throw tantrums over the team radio was the reason for overlooking him is not quite accurate. But his occasional shoutiness did contribute to the overall perception of Lawson as the more robust candidate.

Teams will (albeit grudgingly) accept diva behaviour – but only from drivers who are delivering the goods. Or those whose fathers own the team.

If Tsunoda is going to be truculent at times, he needs to earn the right to do so.