Tsunoda’s Baku surge puts Red Bull’s 2026 call on ice — Mekies: “Why would we rush?”
Yuki Tsunoda picked the perfect weekend to look like a Red Bull driver on merit, not margin. In Baku, he finally made the RB21 sing — and he didn’t just hold on, he held off. A season-best sixth place, keeping Lando Norris tucked up behind him, has reopened a door many in the paddock thought was already swinging toward Isack Hadjar for 2026.
What changed? According to Tsunoda, “now it makes sense.” According to Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies, it was his most complete Sunday in their colours. The numbers backed it up: across long stretches Tsunoda’s pace sat within a few tenths of Max Verstappen, and Verstappen was the one stretching the field. The team expected he’d have to spend half the race defending to help Max up front. He didn’t. He was there on pace.
That’s not how Tsunoda’s year has looked. The Japanese driver has fought the RB21 more than it’s fought for him, yielding just nine points in the opening 14 rounds and too many weekends where qualifying promise dissolved by lap 10. In Azerbaijan, the long runs on Friday pointed to a different story and, crucially, Sunday delivered the ending Red Bull has been waiting to see: tidy, measured, fast, under pressure.
Mekies, who’s been careful all season not to oversell progress that didn’t stick, didn’t hide this time. The team, he said, has been grinding away in Milton Keynes to understand why the car wasn’t delivering what the data teased. Tsunoda and Verstappen have been central to that work — hours in the simulator, endless correlation loops — and Red Bull believes they’ve unlocked a step, at least in the conditions Baku presented. Don’t expect the team to publish a white paper on what’s changed, but do expect them to bank it.
There’s a broader scoreboard here, too. All four drivers in the Red Bull pool scored in Baku: Verstappen won, Liam Lawson delivered a career-best P5 for Racing Bulls, Tsunoda took P6, and Hadjar collected P10. For a program that thrives on internal competition, that’s a statement weekend — and a headache for anyone trying to decide who sits alongside Verstappen when the ’26 regs arrive.
A week ago, the momentum belonged to Hadjar. Back-to-back top 10s and a podium at Zandvoort had the whispers turning into full sentences, with reports suggesting Helmut Marko had already signalled the Frenchman as the next man up. Tsunoda’s Sunday doesn’t erase that form, but it puts a fresh data point on the table: when he and the RB21 finally connect, the ceiling is higher than the first half of the season suggested.
Mekies isn’t playing the calendar game, either. Yes, he reiterated, Red Bull won’t let this run until Abu Dhabi. But the tone was unmistakably calm: there’s time, confidence is building, and speed doesn’t evaporate. Read that as you will. It’s exactly the sort of message that keeps everyone hungry without boxing the team into a corner.
What Tsunoda needs now is obvious: repetition. One brilliant Baku won’t win a contract in this stable. Two or three races showing the same control under pressure, the same low delta to Verstappen, the same economy of mistakes — that moves minds. If the simulator gains are real and not track-specific, the next few rounds will either cement this as the turning point or expose it as a one-off.
As ever with Red Bull, the context matters. Verstappen remains the pole star, and the seat next to him is the most unforgiving in the sport. The driver who gets it in 2026 will need to be fast enough to help, disciplined enough to fit, and robust enough to live with the glare. Lawson’s quiet efficiency for Racing Bulls and Hadjar’s punch of raw results both tick different boxes. Tsunoda, on the best day he’s had in the senior car, hinted he can tick more of them at once.
Sunday night in Baku, he didn’t look like a placeholder. He looked like a problem for Red Bull — the good kind. And for a driver who’s been searching all year for a clean sample of who he can be in this car, that’s worth more than the six points next to his name. The audition isn’t over. It might just have started.
