After being passed over for the second Red Bull seat in favor of Liam Lawson, Yuki Tsunoda’s pace in 2025 seemed to highlight that the wrong decision had been made. Lawson failed to make it out of Q1 in the first two races of 2025, struggling to even get off the last row. Tsunoda, meanwhile, made it into Q3 both times for Racing Bulls.
This included a 5th place start at Melbourne, but unfortunately weather threw a wrench into what would have been a solid points finish. By the time the teams left Shanghai a week later, the disparity was enough that Tsunoda and Lawson were swapped for the third race of the season at Suzuka.
At mid-season, however, Tsunoda’s 2025 results in the Red Bull have not been as anticipated.
After the move, a respectable stretch…
True, Tsunoda has been able to get some results out of the RB21. At his peak this season, he had three straight races—Bahrain, Jeddah, and Miami—making it into Q3. He converted this to 9th at Bahrain and 10th at Miami, but crashed out with Pierre Gasly at the Saudi race.
The following race at Imola he started from the pit lane after a massive wreck in qualifying. Tsunoda responded, working his way up to another point, in P10. It seemed that Tsunoda was making progress in coming to grips with the tricky Red Bull. Unfortunately, this has been the best Tsunoda has managed thus far.
But Tsunoda heads into 2025 mid-season break on a down note
Since Monaco, he has struggled with pace, with his last lead-lap finish was at Barcelona in May. Additionally, Tsunoda took penalties for avoidable contact in the two most recent races, at Austria and Silverstone.
For comparison, teammate and defending champion Max Verstappen has two wins and four poles. Apart from his lap 1 crash at Austria and his own avoidable contact moment at Spain he has not finished outside the top six.
Yet Verstappen himself has noted how much of a task the 2025 car is. Perhaps they were harsh on Lawson? Perhaps they were harsh on Sergio Perez? But the task is now Yuki Tsunoda’s to conjure up results from the Red Bull, which seems to require a very special level of sorcery.
