Yuki Tsunoda finished in 12th for Red Bull this past Sunday at the 2025 Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix in Suzuka. It was an underwhelming performance for a team that needs its second driver to score points to keep pace with its opponents.
The successful junior team racer was a replacement for Liam Lawson, whose performance as the second seat so far this season was also underwhelming.
Despite the change of drivers, they remain third after three races this season. The team's second seat is not producing any points for Red Bull, leaving the four-time World Champion Max Verstappen as the sole collector of points and wins. He won the weekend race, capturing 25 points, and Red Bull holds third spot in the Constructors Championship
It makes one wonder if the change of driver didn’t improve the second seat performance, is the driver the problem, or is it something else?
In an interview on the “High Performance” podcast with Alex Albon, a former teammate of Red Bull's Verstappen between 2019 and 2021, said both cars are tailor-made for the champion.
“I like a car that has a good front end so it is quite sharp, quite direct. Max does too but his level of sharpness and directness is kind of another. It's a whole different level, it's eye-wateringly sharp,” he said.
Albon used the analogy that the car is like a computer mouse.
“If you bump up the sensitivity right completely to the Max and you move that mouse, it's just darting across the screen everywhere, that's how it feels,” he said.
“It becomes so sharp that it makes you a little bit tense,” Albon said.
This suggests the car is built around Verstappen, which leaves second-seat drivers to try and change their style of driving to try and keep up with him.
Tsunoda’s collected 33 points for Red Bull’s junior Formula 1 team Racing Bull using the VCARB car, finishing in the top 10 nine times in the 2024-2025 season. He would often be positioned at 12 or 14 and still captured 33 points.
But this past Sunday in Red Bull’s RB21 car, he finished 12th. Tsunoda started at position 15, and early in the race, he quickly moved up to 13th, where he would remain for the majority of the race.
His position in the race wouldn’t change until he made a pit stop that would drop him to 17th.
Yet again, his position wouldn’t change until five different drivers made pit stops, which would allow Tsunoda to move up 12, where he would finish the race.
He didn’t try to overtake any of the other drivers, even though he kept a gap of 0.7 seconds between the driver in front of him.
the whole point of his promotion was that they were lacking a secondary driver that brought them points.
Tsunoda is known for his aggressive driving style and is very risk-taking with his overtaking maneuvers, but was stagnant and stale.
If they planned to have a driver that was to get a driver that didn’t crash and could get them points, then they succeeded, but with a driving style that is having a hard time trying to overtake in a new car, the plan now for Red Bull is to improve their second seat car for Tsunoda.
But Albon said it won’t happen.
Red Bull has a history of wanting their drivers to adapt to their car and not make any improvements to help their second seat because they pride themselves on having the best car in Formula 1 after winning the Constructors Championship twice.
Though this isn't entirely true, for example, the performance of Sergio Perez.
He was a skilled driver who placed second and third in the world championship rankings in 2022 and 2023 with Red Bull when they won the Constructors, which was before they changed from the RB19 car to RB20.
When Perez moved to the RB20, that is when he struggled; he would crash multiple times and would DNF multiple races.
Red Bull's refusal to improve the second seat shows that they have a lack of care for it, even though they claim that they want to reclaim the Constructors Championship, which is awarded to the team with the best car which is dictated by who has the most points by the end of the season.
If Red Bull wants to show they have the best car in Formula 1 and reclaim the Constructor Championship then they have to swallow their pride: They have to improve the package that would propel Tsunoda to finish in the top 10.
