Red Bull's second Formula 1 driver qualified in the top five at the Australian Grand Prix, within two tenths of a second of Max Verstappen, battled Ferraris for much of the race and only failed to score because their team misjudged its tyre choice in the changing weather.
Given how badly Sergio Perez trailed Verstappen for most of 2024, that was a definite upgrade and a hint Red Bull's lead driver might actually have someone who can give him the support he needs in what looks like being a very challenging championship defence.
The problem was Red Bull's second driver was not in a Red Bull. It was Racing Bulls' Yuki Tsunoda.
Red Bull Racing's actual second driver Liam Lawson appeared to be on a mission to offer Perez fans vindication with his scruffy Q1 exit and a race spent fighting the Haases at the back before crashing out, having been lapped just after half-distance.
Team principal Christian Horner pointed to the "flash of light" of Lawson setting the second fastest race lap in the brief window on dry tyres. But a one-off lap (boosted by DRS from Gabriel Bortoleto's Sauber ahead) in ever-improving track conditions is a flimsy thing to hang hope on when weighed against a race spent mostly in 15th place lapping multiple seconds slower than Verstappen.
There were a few circumstances against Lawson - being the only driver completely new to the Albert Park track, the air intake problem that cost him all of final practice. Red Bull took advantage of his pitlane start to switch him to a higher downforce rear wing so he went into the race on an unfamiliar set-up, but Lawson himself brushed this off as a non-factor.
All weekend Lawson maintained this wasn't about car adaptation or even challenging handling characteristics such as those that sunk Perez.
He just wasn't very fast. And when he was looking faster, he made errors.
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Asked how long he needed to acclimatise to the Red Bull, Lawson replied: "To be honest, I felt used to it in the test. It wasn't like I wasn't adapted or anything like that. It's just been a tough weekend."
Horner agreed: "This weekend wasn't representative of what he's capable of."
There's a decent history of drivers being anomalously terrible for new teams in Melbourne before finding their feet with time and more typical circuits (looking at you, David Coulthard's McLaren debut in 1996). It's way, way too early to judge Lawson, and Horner cautioned that he already expects another "tough" weekend coming up immediately for his new driver at Shanghai - "a sprint race at a track that he's not been to before".
But by the time of the following triple-header, there won't really be any excuses.
Tsunoda's superb Melbourne performance - in which he topped the midfield, outpaced Ferraris and was on course for a top five before being left out on slicks in the wet consigned him to 12th - doesn't directly put pressure on Lawson because Red Bull's spent four years snubbing Tsunoda for mostly character-based reasons already and it's highly unlikely what happened at the opener will change that.
Finally signing him for the second Red Bull Racing seat now would be more an ‘Oh all right, we give in' last-resort signing than a proper endorsement (though Red Bull's got form for major U-turns on drivers when in a tight spot - see rejected protege Alex Albon's initial F1 call-up).
But if it's Tsunoda's emotional nature that still spooks the Red Bull hierarchy, it should give his radio from Melbourne a listen.
His brilliant race imploded when first he was told to pit for intermediates when already coming onto the pit straight and well past the pit entry, then was left out as long as possible on slicks in the worsening rain while being reassured it was as bad as it was going to get. Only when he could barely control the car on the straight was Tsunoda brought in for intermediates.
There was a point when he told engineer Ernesto Desiderio that he was speaking too quietly and a slightly urgent "I can't see it, it's your guys' job!" remark about the weather forecast. But for a supposedly volatile driver dealing with one of the best races of his F1 career being wrecked by poor forecasting and strategy calls, Tsunoda was extremely measured.
And on the slowing-down lap after his point-less 12th place:
Ernesto Desiderio: "Hey Yuki, this result is very hard for the whole team, for you. I know it, you know I share it. One thing I wanted to say was your drive was very, very strong, you didn't put a foot wrong. Well done there, we'll regroup and understand how to do better."
Tsunoda: "Yeah, hard luck guys. We came back strong, we had pace. We just have to outperform every single race from now on. Weather didn't come towards us."
Desiderio: "Yep, thanks mate."
When he met the media afterwards, Tsunoda admitted it was "very frustrating" that Racing Bulls' likely main rival Williams had scored the top five he'd been denied, but was generally gentle in his assessment of the weather forecasting miscue.
If anything his biggest plea was for Racing Bulls to properly understand how it had managed to be so fast in qualifying to make sure it was repeatable (a tow from Lando Norris's McLaren was handy, but certainly wasn't the entire reason Tsunoda qualified so close to Verstappen and ahead of both Ferraris). Team boss Laurent Mekies reckoned/hoped Racing Bulls just hadn't shown its hand as much as others in testing and was more competitive when it counted than it had looked when it didn't.
Tsunoda suspected that single-lap pace might stand Racing Bulls in good stead for Shanghai and its sprint format this weekend - the same Shanghai weekend when Horner reckons Lawson will probably struggle again.
How many Melbourne style performance juxtapositions might it take for Red Bull to decide maybe it could live with Tsunoda's emotions after all?
