Tsunoda plays it coy as Red Bull’s 2026 call looms: “I know something… actually, maybe not”
Yuki Tsunoda arrived in Qatar with a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes and a line that only turned up the volume on the noise around him. Asked where his future sits inside Red Bull’s two-team ecosystem, he fired a tease, then hit reverse.
“I know something that I can’t share,” he said, before conceding, “Actually, I have a similar understanding with you guys. I don’t know what is going to happen, let’s see.”
That’s the mood music in the paddock right now. Red Bull — the only operation running two F1 teams — is poised to lock in its 2026 driver rosters for Red Bull Racing and Racing Bulls after this weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix. Racing Bulls team principal Laurent Mekies even put a date on it: “We will announce our line-up immediately after Qatar. Just one more week of patience,” he told Nextgen Auto.
Translated: the long audition is almost over.
The broad strokes are well known. One seat at the senior team is non-negotiable given Max Verstappen’s status, and it’s widely understood Isack Hadjar has driven himself into the frame alongside him with the sort of rookie-season authority that tends to move mountains in Salzburg and Milton Keynes. That funnels the real fight to Faenza, where Tsunoda and Liam Lawson are thought to be jostling for a Racing Bulls berth — with junior hotshot Arvid Lindblad hovering as a very real promotion option.
Red Bull hasn’t blinked publicly. Tsunoda, for his part, insists there’s no Plan B parked up elsewhere. A mooted reserve role at Aston Martin — attractive given Honda’s arrival there — evaporated when the team opted for Jak Crawford for 2026. So it’s Red Bull or bust, and the Japanese driver isn’t pretending otherwise.
“I’m only thinking about this race,” he said. “The decision is not made yet, it’s still in my hands. I’ll just try to support Max as much as possible and if I’m able to achieve that, that will naturally be positive for my future.”
That last line tells you where the goalposts are. Since stepping into the senior team ahead of round three, Tsunoda has quietly banked a run of points finishes — six top-10s — but hasn’t cracked the top five. His high-water mark remains sixth in Baku. The expectation inside Red Bull is clear: run to Verstappen’s pace window when the strategy opens, disrupt the McLarens when they’re within reach, and make yourself impossible to drop. Do that in Lusail, under floodlights and crosswinds, and you’ll put an exclamation point on your case.
“Try to be up there, as close to Max as possible,” he added. “I guess naturally that will be top five… hopefully be able to start ahead of [McLaren] in the race and hopefully I can do something in the strategy.”
It’s an unforgiving marketplace. Red Bull’s junior pipeline is both a safety net and a trapdoor, and the organisation has never been sentimental when the stopwatch points one way. This is a driver programme that rewards momentum; when it senses it elsewhere — in a Lawson ready to be unleashed full-time, or a Lindblad too good to hold back — it tends to act quickly.
The flipside is Tsunoda’s growth curve in 2025 has been genuine. The raw edges have been sanded down, the radio fireworks reduced to occasional sparks, and the racecraft’s sharpened. He’s become far better at salvaging ugly Saturdays and turning them into useful Sundays, and that’s the kind of consistency teams crave when titles are on the line and constructors’ points pay the bills.
But potential doesn’t sign contracts. Lap time and execution do. And the next 300 kilometres in Qatar will be weighed heavily in the rooms that matter.
There’s also the simple politics of it all. Red Bull likes to keep options alive — and leverage high — until the last possible moment. By flagging an announcement straight after Qatar, Mekies has put the candidates on notice and the paddock on pause. The impression is that the big calls are largely shaped; now it’s about confirmation bias. Deliver here, and you confirm what your bosses already want to believe.
Tsunoda’s task is simple to state and hard to deliver: qualify cleanly, hang onto Verstappen’s coattails, insert himself between the orange cars when the race breathes, and make the debriefs easy. Do that, and the “I know something” line might finally mean something. If not, well, Red Bull has never been shy about turning the page.
For now, though, the door is open a crack. Tsunoda can either walk through it on merit — or spend the winter wondering what might’ve been.
