The eyes of the world will be on Yuki Tsunoda at Suzuka as he steps into the toughest role in Formula 1.
Being Max Verstappen's team-mate is no walk in the park, but it’s Tsunoda’s big chance to make a breakthrough and become a frontrunner rather than a midfield journeyman hoping for the odd point here and there.
Many feel that whoever is alongside Max at Red Bull is doomed, but Tsunoda has four full seasons of F1 experience under his belt and has steadily improved since his first season in 2021. The below graph shows his progress compared to his various team-mates.
It shows the frequency in percentage terms with which he beat his team-mate in qualifying and the race during that period (on occasions where both drivers finished), with his record getting better and better.
As there are only two 2025 races in the history books, that's left out and although Isack Hadjar beat him in the race in China and outqualified him, Tsunoda's all-round performance was actually better and he would have finished ahead but for the wing problem in the race.
The improvement is clear, as you would expect. What makes it difficult to judge his performance consistency is that Racing Bulls, RB, AlphaTauri or whatever they want us to call it this week, is itself inconsistent. You could argue that he hasn’t converted enough of his good qualifying performances into results, but just looking at the two grands prix this year where team strategy errors and a front wing failure that he didn’t cause have cost him dearly.
At Red Bull, it will be different. Not only is he up against a driver in Verstappen who wrings every bit of performance out of the car, but he’s also in a team that usually gets the most out of the machinery and makes good strategy calls.
Red Bull expects results and as Liam Lawson learned to his cost, these are expected immediately. That means that even having been thrown in during the season with little preparation beyond some time in the simulator at Milton Keynes, and with the pressure of the home fans on his shoulder, a good performance will be demanded at Suzuka.
So what would be a good weekend in Japan for Tsunoda? It’s his home track, he knows it well and will have most of the crowd rooting for him. It’s also main backer Honda’s home track and whether that will be pressure or motivation can’t be judged until we get to the on-track action. But it means nothing when you get behind the wheel as then it will be down to Tsunoda to block all of that out and make the most of a challenging situation.
In qualifying, being within three tenths of a second of Verstappen would be acceptable. In the race, all things being equal, finishing within three positions of Verstappen would also tick the box. Red Bull will probably want more than that, but even Red Bull knows Rome wasn’t built in a day.
It’s easy to criticise Red Bull but it has opened the door to many drivers and gave them the opportunity in the lower formulas to carve out a career in motorsport that they wouldn’t otherwise have had.
However, when it comes to F1 it’s a different story as the vast sums of money invested in its driver programme hasn’t entirely paid off in terms of its driver line-up. Yes, it’s always had a star team leader, but not since 2018 with Daniel Ricciardo has Verstappen’s team-mate consistently delivered what’s required. Red Bull is not good at handling these situations, so it’s probably a sink-or-swim situation for Tsunoda, although having almost run out of options then this change needs to be for the rest of the season and whatever it takes, made to work.
So how should Red Bull go about this? First of all, the team must listen to him and react to his initial feedback. It needs to adapt the car to his style but he also needs to be open minded and adapt to the car. He has been relatively competitive in the Racing Bulls car, but has got a bit too excited now and again so he needs to be in a calm environment.
There are many, myself included, asking if the B-team car is actually faster than the A-team’s car? You could perhaps say the Red Bull is the faster car at its peak, but in some ways, the Racing Bulls machine is the better all-rounder with a much more accessible peak.
It’s fair to say that the Red Bull has the potential to be much faster, but that needs to be proven on track week-in week-out and Tsunoda is the vehicle for achieving that through his feedback. We all know that Max could do a decent job in a shopping cart, but sometimes that can lead you down the garden path. Listen to the new boy and you might just also help Max to get back to his winning ways. This is what makes the second driver so important as their feedback must be listened to and then feed into the development direction.
Last year at Suzuka, Verstappen was still in his spell of early-season dominance. He took pole position with then team-mate Sergio Perez second, just 0.066s down, one of the closest intra-team 2024 Red Bull margins. Tsunoda was 10th, 1.3s off pole position with RB team-mate Daniel Ricciardo 11th. Overall, that was a good result for both teams and all four drivers.
As Perez did this time last year, Tsunoda needs to be biting at Max’s heels in qualifying with the Racing Bulls of Lawson and Hadjar on the fringes of getting into Q3. That would prove that the Red Bull is the faster car and justify the change from Lawson to Tsunoda.
However, even if that does happen and Tsunoda performs well, then the big question remains: why did Red Bull make the wrong decision on the drivers in the first place?
