Tsunoda leaves Vegas empty-handed and out of patience: “Everything’s going against me”
Yuki Tsunoda’s night stroll down the Strip ended the way too many of his Sundays have in 2025: head down, no points, and a nagging sense the race got away from him before it even began.
The Red Bull driver started from the pit lane in Las Vegas after a rough qualifying triggered a power unit change, and while others turned chaos into opportunity – Lewis Hamilton hauling from 19th to eighth, Kimi Antonelli vaulting from 17th to the podium – Tsunoda could only drag his RB21 to 12th. Even the post-race disqualification of both McLarens couldn’t haul him into the points. It was his 16th scoreless finish of the season.
“The safety car came in right after we did it,” he said of an early strategic call that went the wrong way when a Virtual Safety Car intervened. “We tried to be different, tried to make it work, but it specifically came in and a bunch of people just got in front. So there was no point.
“It feels like everything so far is going against me. I don’t like the word ‘luck’ but this weekend felt like really, really bad luck. It’s strange and frustrating that I wasn’t able to use the pace I had until qualifying. Just throwing it away.”
There was pace to talk about. In practice, Tsunoda looked lively – by his telling, genuinely in the mix with Max Verstappen across runs from FP1 to FP3, “multiple times” even ahead. But the thread snapped on Saturday.
Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies didn’t sugar-coat it. “With Yuki, we lost the points yesterday,” he said post-race. “We know that, and hence we tried to take a bit more risk and to be different compared to the field. We knew that otherwise we would just be stuck in traffic, so we tried to pit him very early, to give him some free air, get him to show his pace. It was not enough today.”
That willing roll of the dice is how you play Vegas when you’re out of position. But the timing couldn’t have been worse. The VSC hurt, then the following green-flag phases boxed Tsunoda back into the queue he’d tried to escape. The fact that others made hay from the same messy race only sharpened the edge.
For Tsunoda, this isn’t just about one race. The broader picture matters, because inside the Red Bull camp there are still seats to be settled for the future alongside Verstappen – three of them across the two teams – and he knows the window to make an irresistible case is narrowing. He’s in his fifth season at this level. Weekends like this don’t help.
“At least I’ve shown it multiple times until qualifying,” he said, trying to pull something positive from the weekend. “From FP1 to FP3, every session, performance runs, I was fighting quite strongly with Max and multiple times ahead of him. Something we haven’t seen for a long time. So I should take that as a positive. The incredible thing about Max is he’ll bring another level into qualifying, and he has the confidence as well.”
There’s honesty in that last line. Verstappen’s qualifying floor is most drivers’ ceiling; Tsunoda knows it. But if there’s a sliver of encouragement for him and for the team’s decision-makers, it’s that the raw speed was there before Saturday unraveled. It’s been a recurring theme this year: a decent baseline, then a missed step when it counts. And once you’re starting from the wrong postcode in 2025, you’re typically relying on the sport’s roulette wheel to land your way. It didn’t.
You could argue Tsunoda was due a break in Vegas. He didn’t get it. What he can control is what happens between now and first runs on Saturday at the next one. Qualifying form will decide his fate far more than any quirk of the safety car, and he knows that too.
The brutal truth is that Vegas was a race that offered a way back to many who’d tripped up early in the weekend. Hamilton found it. Antonelli found it in spectacular style. Tsunoda didn’t. That’s the line that will stick in the debrief.
Luck? Maybe. But luck isn’t a strategy. And Red Bull, with choices to make, won’t be betting their future on a roulette spin.
