Tsunoda's Red Bull frustration is nearing the Sainz point of no return
Fri 29, Nov, 2024
Source: The Race
Yuki Tsunoda has long made it pretty clear that he has felt overlooked when it comes to Red Bull's 2025 dilemma over who should partner Max Verstappen - but his tone and rhetoric escalated coming into the Qatar Grand Prix.
The 24-year-old, who is approaching the conclusion of his fourth season in Formula 1, feels he is the natural candidate for a Red Bull promotion.
Red Bull has tended to disagree though. It is understood that while Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko would be open to trying out Tsunoda in the main team, others in the structure - including team boss Christian Horner - have persistently expressed reservations.
And those reservations are thought to be significant in line to where Tsunoda has long appeared to be fourth in line at best for the drive - first behind struggling incumbent Sergio Perez, super-sub Liam Lawson and prodigal son Daniel Ricciardo - and now behind F1's newest driver Franco Colapinto, who has emerged as a driver of interest for Red Bull not long after Ricciardo's underperformance relative to Tsunoda led to his exit.
Tsunoda has generally not shied away from discussing Red Bull's driver policy and his position within that, but his pre-weekend media appearance at Lusail represented something else entirely.
What Tsunoda said
Tsunoda has a test with the main team coming up after the season finale at Abu Dhabi - but said the final rounds of the season are "definitely more important" for his Red Bull candidacy.
"I mean, throughout the year so far, how they're seeing me, Red Bull, I feel like the test is just a test," he said.
"Hopefully the test will maybe add a bit more, a better impression, a better picture of exactly who I am as a driver. But I think the next two races are definitely more important to be in that mix, talking about those seats."
But when asked whether he really was in that mix, Tsunoda offered a sharp answer.
"I don't know," he said. "Please could you interview them and find out?
"To be honest, I don't know. Even, whatever they say in interviews - even if they say 'oh, Yuki is in the mix', I don't know if that's the truth, to be honest.
"I hope I'm in the mix. And if not, I don't know what I should do more than this. I'll just keep pushing. The things that I control - and those things, the Red Bull seat, they decide it. Yeah. I'm sure if I'd be in the seat, I could definitely fight for higher constructors' championship [position] and what they want. Other things, politics things, they decide what they want."
Tsunoda was clearly a step behind the Red Bull-demoted Pierre Gasly in his first two years in F1, though closed the gap substantially to Gasly in his second year. He has outperformed new recruit Nyck de Vries and returnee Ricciardo since, and his head-to-head against Lawson appears to be trending in his favour.
It's what forms his logic - as he said that "historically" it has been "pretty natural" within Red Bull for a promotion to follow when "one of the drivers outperforms the other driver, like this, consistently the last few years".
"I don't know, maybe something changed. Yeah. Dynamics changed maybe, Red Bull itself changed after... Mr. [Dietrich] Mateschitz passed away- I don't know.
"I mean, still one of the [Red Bull] drivers is the drivers' champion, the team has had success for quite a long time, so... what they're doing I guess is not a bad thing. But it doesn't really make sense for me that I've not really been in the mix much so far."
Tsunoda - whose situation will not have been helped at all by long-term benefactor Honda splitting with Red Bull - said he's got used to this being the situation and added that he has "just got to force them through my performance". His masterplan is to drive at such a level that Red Bull comes to view him as can't-miss prospect.
But he doesn't feel he's coming up short, exactly. And he did say that his RB team's current fight for sixth place in the constructors' standings shouldn't be an overriding factor.
"The constructors' thing is not just about me, you know? I will feel definitely responsible as a driver, myself, if we're not able to achieve P6, because maybe a couple of races I could've done better. But I'm sure every team, every driver has those situations.
"If they say 'okay, P6 is the task that you have to be in the Red Bull seat', it's pretty... a pretty difficult thing to say. A teams' championship is combined between drivers, not just an individual driver. So, yeah. But I'll do as much as I can.
"I'll take it that way. Hopefully if I score P6, that gives a better reason to put me in the Red Bull seat."
And while it has been consistently debated whether the gap between Verstappen and Perez has been exacerbated by Red Bull being a particularly tricky car, one which could make any potential Perez replacement look below-par, Tsunoda said that his recent experience trying out the Red Bull in a simulator as preparation for his test suggested the opposite.
"The amount of speed you can carry into the corner and it's quite sharp, sharp turn-in compared to our car, but it just feels great, you know?" he enthused.
"I was normally... simulator work is more like work, right? But when I was driving, I felt a bit of an enjoyable feeling. I don't think - at least so far, what I experienced in the simulator - it's a car that won't suit me. I think actually the car suits me well. So, yeah, it's pretty good."
An inflection point
If Red Bull does decide that continuing with Perez is untenable - and he really hasn't given it much reason to feel otherwise as of late - Tsunoda's candidacy as a least-resistance option is so very easy to make the argument for.
But so was the argument for signing Carlos Sainz earlier this season, and that never came to be. Tsunoda does not have that much time left to "force" a Red Bull change of heart - and, in fact, speaking so openly about his frustrations risks reinforcing the existing reservations about him.
If that proves the case, though, he never really had a chance anyway. And while a Perez stay of execution, given he's already under contract and such a familiar presence, could probably be easier to accept (though maybe not, given Tsunoda's reference to delivering a higher constructors' finish), Red Bull turning to a part-timer in Lawson or Colapinto will surely represent a point of no return.
It would deliver a clear-as-day message to Tsunoda that he has hit his ceiling within the Red Bull system.
More than anything, it feels like a callback to a very memorable Carlos Sainz media appearance from 2017 - in which Sainz, then in his third year at Toro Rosso, publicly put himself on the market by near-ruling out a four year with the team.
It went down like a lead balloon with Red Bull, who quickly pointed to the 2018 option in Sainz's contract and the fact it had total say over where he drives. But he was gone by the end of the season anyway, loaned to Renault and then released entirely from the Red Bull programme.
Red Bull does not have to do that with Tsunoda, and Tsunoda does not currently have any suitors that would buy him out. But unsettled drivers within teams just don't make sense for any extended period of time - and Tsunoda's comments make it very obvious he will be unsettled, and perhaps already is, unless Red Bull gives him a go in the main team.
Red Bull does not have to care. It doesn't need to care, really, if it genuinely doesn't see a future for Tsunoda in the main team under any circumstances - if he's not the programme's future, then there's not as much of an emphasis on keeping him happy.
But if it had designs on Tsunoda as a long-term RB anchor and benchmark, a content driver it can rely on to keep the second team scoring points and to tell it which of its rookies are really good without ever angling for a promotion himself - Tsunoda's comments have made it as clear as ever that will not be the case.