Contender number five step forward. Yuki Tsunoda is the latest Formula 1 driver attempting to walk into Max Verstappen’s perilous backyard and prove that he can handle it.
Red Bull’s search for a reliable second driver alongside Verstappen since Daniel Ricciardo’s shock exit at the end of 2018 has been patchy at best and a horrendous failure at worst.
There were glimpses of Alex Albon being good enough in late 2019 and early 2020 and Sergio Perez was a solid short-term stop-gap that was used for far too long, but all four of the post-Ricciardo drivers have crumbled one way or another.
And none of them have faltered quicker than the driver Red Bull rated higher than Tsunoda, Liam Lawson.
Lawson was a driver that Red Bull did everything not to promote at times. It overlooked his two solid years in Formula 2 in favour of Nyck de Vries because of one good cameo for Williams, brought Ricciardo back and gave him plenty of time to shine at Lawson’s expense.
So you have to wonder if that’s how Red Bull treated the driver it thought was a better fit to be Verstappen’s team-mate despite only having 11 races to his name, than Tsunoda who had four seasons under his belt, just how low does it rate Tsunoda?
And what does that mean for his start to life at Red Bull? Is he already a dead man walking?
How good is Tsunoda really?
After a shaky rookie season where there were flashes of brilliance obscured by inconsistency in 2021, Tsunoda began to evolve into a more rounded midfield operator during his final season alongside Pierre Gasly in 2022.
So much so that when Gasly departed, Tsunoda stepped into the team leader role well, thumping De Vries into an early sacking in 2023, and was generally stronger than Ricciardo across their 26 weekends together - something that ended Ricciardo’s hopes of a second Red Bull stint.
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And he did compare well against Lawson too. Only Red Bull has the full data but Tsunoda maintained a 100% grand prix qualifying record against Lawson during their six 2024 race weekends together - even if Lawson’s big intra-team sprint qualifying victories in Brazil and Qatar skew the final one-lap pace percentage in his favour.
Tsunoda obviously had the upper hand of vastly superior experience, but he’s been the most reliable second Red Bull driver since early 2023.
His 2025 total of just three points so far is entirely unrepresentative of the strong start he’s made. After a tricky pre-season test, he’s helped Racing Bulls position itself alongside Williams at the front of the midfield.
Unfortunately, poor team execution means Tsunoda has missed out on a big points payday in both grands prix so far, tellingly only scoring points in the pitstop-less China sprint where he beat a Mercedes and a McLaren to sixth.
That performance level really isn’t that different from what got Gasly and Albon promoted to the senior team. It’s taken Tsunoda longer to get there - perhaps that has partly played against him - but you also have to remember Tsunoda’s single-seater foundation was a fast-tracked two years in Japanese F4 followed by a single season in each of Formula 3 and Formula 2 (where he ended up 15 points off the title).
At first, it felt as if Tsunoda’s presence was a gift to engine partner Honda. Then, from 2023 he evolved into being a useful benchmark for Red Bull testing its driver experiments again. And now it appears as if Red Bull might have finally realised that if all these drivers are coming in and failing to get to Tsunoda’s level - maybe that level really isn’t that bad.
And he’s done everything he can to improve the weakness that’s held Red Bull back from promoting him.
'Emotional control'
Working on his emotions inside the cockpit has been a target of Tsunoda ever since his fiery rookie season, where expletive-filled radio messages earned him a reputation as a driver not afraid to unload his frustration on his engineer.
Tsunoda and Red Bull’s second team have worked hard to remedy that but progress has been slow. Remember, it was only a year ago when Tsunoda almost clashed with Ricciardo on the cooldown lap after fury with team orders in the 2024 Bahrain Grand Prix.
Now anger over the team radio is clearly not enough to put Red Bull off. But it is linked to Red Bull’s concerns that Tsunoda wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure of being Verstappen’s team-mate.
That’s what stopped Red Bull from promoting him more than any concerns about Tsunoda’s pace.
Ironically, it’s what gave Lawson the advantage when Red Bull was deciding. He was seen as a mentally robust option who could adapt quickly and cope with the pressure-cooker environment.
How wrong Red Bull was. But Lawson’s failure is also a warning to Red Bull and Tsunoda.
You can go into that team with a full pre-season under your belt, all the confidence in the world, a strong track record of adapting quickly, and still come out miles off the pace and completely lost.
Importantly though, what Tsunoda has proved is that he doesn’t give up. He’s stomached Red Bull rejection after Red Bull rejection and seen off a whole crop of drivers that Red Bull believed in more than him.
Can he handle the RB21?
So can Tsunoda adapt to the very particular Red Bull that’s chewed up and spat out so many drivers who simply can’t do what Verstappen can do?
That’s the key question that we’ll only get the first proper answers to at Suzuka.
Tsunoda has sampled Red Bull’s RB20 in the post-season Abu Dhabi last year, and was very quick to say “I didn’t really struggle much to adapt”.
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He added: ”On the long runs, I have been able to run consistently and straight away felt the limitations of the car, which if you don’t have confidence in the car you can’t feel any limitations.”
But it’s of course worth noting that Lawson also drove the RB20, and his time in that car didn’t raise red flags for what would be his downfall in the RB21.
The RB21 is clearly not an easy car to walk into. It’s no wonder Verstappen even suggested Lawson would be faster in the Racing Bulls than the Red Bull.
He’s absolutely right. Not because the Racing Bulls is a faster car - it isn’t - but because the peak performance is much more accessible than the RB21’s.
It’s why it wouldn’t be any surprise to see Lawson ahead of Tsunoda in the early stages of the Japanese GP weekend. The key will be Tsunoda making bigger early strides than Lawson was able to and reversing that gap.
Verstappen has a unique ability to find the limit of the car, even one as compromised as the RB21. He knows how to load up the front through fast corners - like Turn 9/10 at Albert Park - without unsettling the rear. Lawson fell foul of this and consistently had oversteer that wrecked his confidence and laptime.
It’s the kind of capricious car that you can only know how a driver will perform in it once they’re driving it in a competitive grand prix weekend where there’s limited time and evolving track conditions that you have to follow.
Still, it's an opportunity for Tsunoda to prove Red Bull was wrong and back up his punchy Abu Dhabi test comments and after all, what's he got to lose?
He couldn't prove anything more at Racing Bulls. He could only prove whether Isack Hadjar is or isn't a top prospect.
Being stuck as Red Bull's second team benchmark is a one-way road to the F1 scrapheap. Plus Tsunoda’s place there beyond 2025 was far from guaranteed given Honda's departure and Red Bull's keenness to get 17-year-old Arvid Lindblad into an F1 car as soon as possible.
His options for a 2026 seat elsewhere looked increasingly limited but he now has an unexpected chance to change the course of his F1 career...or simply accelerate to the death of it.
