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Red Bull's most overlooked driver Yuki Tsunoda says he needs to be close to perfect if he's to win the shootout to be Max Verstappen's 2025 team-mate.
Liam Lawson's been dropped into Daniel Ricciardo's RB seat for the rest of 2024 to effectively audition as a replacement for Sergio Perez in the senior Red Bull Racing team.
Ricciardo was touted as a potential Perez replacement, placed at RB as a "backstop" for Perez in the words of team boss Christian Horner, with Tsunoda's role seemingly being that of a benchmark RB driver to judge others against rather than a future Red Bull Racing driver himself.
“Taking [Tsunoda] as the data point, we saw with Daniel where he compared to Yuki. It will be very interesting to see how Liam performs over the last six remaining races," Horner said after Ricciardo's exit.
Red Bull has overlooked Tsunoda despite him generally outperforming Ricciardo in 2024, having crushed Ricciardo's predecessor Nyck de Vries in the first half of 2023 and made great strides since a patchy rookie season in 2021.
He's thus far never been a serious candidate for promotion to the senior team, but Tsunoda believes Lawson joining effectively only continues a shootout for the second Red Bull seat that he's been a part of since the start of 2024.
"Maybe from the outside. But for me, from the first race already onwards, it's kind of [already been a] shootout between me and Daniel," Tsunoda said when The Race put it to him that this was a six-race shootout with Lawson.
"Who is going to be ahead all the time [influences] next year's contracts. For me, it's [the shootout is] a part of the whole season."
Tsunoda says there are always Red Bull rumours "floating around" and he's "got used to it, there's no point talking about it".
He continued: "I just have to keep proving myself with results and how I work throughout the race weekends. Keep focusing on what I have to do and those opportunities - whatever stuff - it's up to [Red Bull]."
The Race asked Tsunoda what he still has to improve as a driver to earn the promotion, with the fourth-year driver looking to vanquish any remaining excuse Red Bull has not to promote him.
"I just have to keep proving myself and be a driver where there are not many things that I've left for them that they can blame me [or say] 'OK there's things you didn't improve or are lacking, so you can't be in Red Bull'," Tsunoda said.
"I'll just try to be close to [being the] perfect driver, that's what I need to do."
Tsunoda agreed the shootout only intensifies the competition between team-mates and said it will provide "slightly more spice on top of the usual" dynamic.
"I know those things anyway are just floating around [Red Bull rumours]," Tsunoda said.
"It's not things I've seen with my eyes literally on the table, at least on my side.
"I just focus on what I have to do and Liam will do a good job as well and I'll make sure I'll be ahead of him and hopefully we can achieve P6 [RB is three points ahead of a rapidly closing Haas team] in the championship. That's the main goal."
He hasn't spoken to Ricciardo since an "emotional" exchange in the immediate aftermath of the Singapore Grand Prix where they told each other that they "appreciated each other".
Tsunoda credited Ricciardo as the "driver I've learned most from" of any of his four F1 team-mates so far.
THE RACE SAYS
A lose-lose situation?
I can't help but feel Tsunoda is in another undeserved lose-lose solution here.
Obviously, if Lawson beats him across these six races, it's fully game over for Tsunoda's chances of Red Bull promotion for the rest of his career.
But even if he gets the upper hand on Lawson over the next six races, there's a big risk his incumbency and experience will be caveats enough to continue to overlook him. It will likely be seen more as a reflection that Lawson's failed rather than Tsunoda succeeded.
Just look at 2024 so far. Tsunoda had nine Q3 appearances to Ricciardo's three and comprehensively outpointed him 22-12. But that was simply seen as a Ricciardo failure rather than yet another example that Tsunoda could be a credible Red Bull option if it was to finally entertain the idea.
He's grown as a driver well beyond his erratic rookie season and the all-important "emotional control" as Tsunoda puts it, has improved greatly.
If you keep having drivers fail to live up to your benchmark, then maybe it's time to realise that says as much about the quality of your benchmark as it does about those who fail to match it.
Tsunoda's deserving of Red Bull making this Lawson-Perez fight a three-way shootout. And should Tsunoda outperform Lawson over the rest of 2024, then he deserves far better than life as Red Bull's perennial benchmark.
