Yuki Tsunoda’s Red Bull audition is drifting toward a verdict, and Monza didn’t help his case.
The Japanese driver’s 2025 has been a study in contrasts: the long-awaited shot alongside Max Verstappen but little sign he’s unlocked the car that keeps chewing up Red Bull’s second seat. After another bruising weekend at the Italian Grand Prix, the decision on 2026 is edging closer — and the clock is not Tsunoda’s friend.
This wasn’t how it was drawn up. Red Bull started the year with Liam Lawson next to Verstappen, taking a big swing on youth. Two rounds in, with Lawson nowhere and the points drying up, the team hit undo and put Tsunoda in the car. On paper, the safer play. In practice, it’s been rough. Verstappen is doing Verstappen things in the title fight, while Tsunoda is mired near the back of the standings with a tally that underscores just how steep the learning curve has been.
The numbers from Monza tell the story. Almost eight tenths slower than Verstappen in Q3, then 81 seconds down at the flag and out of the points, Tsunoda’s Sunday was further compromised by contact with Lawson at the second chicane. Floor damage left him driving a wounded RB21 and more than a little aggrieved.
“I got distracted by Lawson… I picked up damage, and that was big enough to slow me down quite a lot,” Tsunoda said. “If you’re fighting for points, I can understand — even with a sister team, we’re enemies. But there’s a line you can’t cross… I was fighting for points and he wasn’t.”
Helmut Marko didn’t bother softening the message. The motorsport advisor — and the man whose eyebrow you never want arched in your direction — brushed off a Friday query with a terse “Yuki, Yuki, Yuki,” and hinted at a “mental” block in qualifying. Post‑race, he called the Lawson clash “incredibly stupid” and was blunt about the pace: “There was no pace.”
That said, it’s not universal doom inside the Red Bull camp. Laurent Mekies, who knows Tsunoda as well as anyone after years shepherding him on the sister-team side, has been preaching patience and pointing to small steps.
“Yuki has been making a good step in the last three races,” Mekies noted coming into Monza. “He was back in the points at Zandvoort, close to Max in Budapest, and had his best qualifying with the team in Spa. We all want more, but he’s on a positive trend.”
There’s the rub. The flashes are there — a tidier qualifying lap here, a cleaner first stint there — but the breakthrough hasn’t landed. And within the pressure cooker that is Red Bull’s second seat, patience is a scarce commodity. The comparison most will make is Sergio Perez’s 2024, which ended in a parting of ways. The gap to Verstappen this year is even larger.
Complicating matters: the looming split with Honda at season’s end and the wider picture for 2026. With the engine transition and new regulations on the horizon, Red Bull isn’t just picking a driver. It’s choosing a development partner to help puzzle out a completely different machine. If they believe Tsunoda will get there, he’ll live to fight on. If not, the pipeline is bustling.
Enter Isack Hadjar. The Frenchman’s momentum is real, and the paddock whispers are loud enough to hear over the engines. Marko has publicly said the team wants a few more races to watch before locking anything in, with decisions targeted around September or October. Options have been extended; leashes, not forever.
Tsunoda, for his part, is taking the only stance that makes sense: keep the head down, extract what he can, try to turn the narrative with laps, not lines.
“It’s not easy,” he said after Monza. “Quali is getting better — until Q2 I was two tenths behind Max. We know there’s a different floor. Long-run pace, I can work on more. I just have to keep fighting, chin up, believe in myself.”
It’s a fair point about the floor spec, and the Lawson hit, and the data windows. But the Red Bull has a unique set of demands and a narrow operating window. Plenty of capable drivers have found themselves at sea in it. This isn’t a Tsunoda problem as much as a seat problem — the Verstappen benchmark is merciless, the car language unforgiving, and even experienced hands can look anonymous if they miss the sweet spot.
Still, faith has to be repaid. With Honda departing and a new era approaching, Red Bull needs certainty. If Tsunoda can stitch together a clean weekend — top‑six qualifying, proper race pace, points without caveats — he buys time and changes the energy around the garage. If the next few rounds look like Monza, that door to 2026 narrows.
No grand speeches will save him. Only laps. Only a Sunday that finally looks like the driver who once dragged a midfield car into places it didn’t belong.
He knows it. They know it. And the calendar isn’t getting any longer.
