By James Broughton, May 23, 2025
Yuki Tsunoda’s promotion from Red Bull’s junior team to the main works outfit is a testament to his growth throughout his Formula 1 career. The raw speed and hot-headedness that once defined him have evolved into a more refined approach—still quick, but now measured, with only occasional flashes of volatility. I’ve always believed he was the stronger candidate to replace Sergio Perez over Liam “No Friends” Lawson. It took just two races into the 2025 season for Red Bull to realise their mistake and make the switch—Lawson out, Tsunoda in.
While Tsunoda has proven to be an upgrade over Lawson, the poisoned chalice remains: being Max Verstappen’s teammate. It’s difficult to assess the true competitiveness of the RB25, though many speculate it’s the second or third-best car on the grid. Regardless, Verstappen’s unique ability to extract maximum performance makes the difference.
The consistent struggles of Red Bull’s second drivers are often misattributed to the car being tailored to Verstappen’s style. In truth, it’s more a case of Verstappen operating at a level above the rest of the field. Matching him requires nothing short of world-class ability.
At the Imola Grand Prix, Tsunoda himself acknowledged the vast performance gap between him and Verstappen. In an attempt at a one-lap qualifying miracle, he pushed too hard and suffered a heavy crash—flipping and somersaulting through the air before landing upright in the gravel trap. Thankfully, he walked away unharmed, but the incident is estimated to have cost Red Bull £1 million in repairs.
The crash exposed a driver still coming to grips with a car he doesn’t fully understand, especially when operating at the limit. However, in a recent media interview, Tsunoda explained the lessons he took from the incident and what he plans to do differently to avoid repeating the mistake.
“To be honest, the approach I was doing in qualifying, I don’t think it’s the first time I’ve done it,” he told the official F1 channel. “It’s not like I’ve just done it suddenly in that qualifying. I was doing it in the last few years and I didn’t have obviously any crash with [RB] with a single lap.”
“So to be honest it just made me recognise how much I’m still not really understanding about the limit about this car.”
“I don’t think I’m just going to change the approach, I have to take it a little bit easy when we change something in the set up. It looks like this car reacted a lot more than how it used to be at [RB]. So I think that’s it.”
“The one-lap pace was pretty good,” he said. “Until FP2, especially, I was pretty close to Max. In FP3 I didn’t have much opportunity to have many laps. So to be honest, I had quite okay confidence into the qualifying.”
“That made it even worse for myself that I probably made too high expectations of myself and tried to be hero in the first lap in Q1, which is really unnecessary. Those things I have to step back and really think about it and do better next time, for sure.”