Red Bull shuts the door: Tsunoda benched for 2026 as Hadjar gets the nod
Yuki Tsunoda learned his fate the hard way. After Qatar, he was told Abu Dhabi would be his last Grand Prix as a Red Bull race driver, no matter what happened in the finale or how much he might play the team game for Max Verstappen. The die was cast: you’re out, Isack Hadjar is in.
Red Bull made its call well before the curtain fell. Tsunoda, Hadjar, Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad were all informed ahead of the season finale. The 2026 picture reads like this: Hadjar steps up to partner Verstappen at Red Bull, Lawson stays put at Racing Bulls, and Lindblad makes the jump from Formula 2. Tsunoda, bruised but still inside the building, becomes the reserve across both teams.
That’s a cold sentence for a driver who, in 2025, staged an audacious climb. He started the year at Racing Bulls and was propelled into Red Bull machinery by round three, a sudden promotion that turned his season on its head and put him shoulder-to-shoulder with Verstappen. From there he chased the one thing that matters at Milton Keynes: a reason to keep the top seat. It wasn’t enough.
“It was difficult because he was very disappointed,” Helmut Marko admitted in Abu Dhabi, speaking to media as he prepares to leave Red Bull at the end of the year. “But we explained he should stay in the family as reserve driver. For four cars there’s always a chance. And, you know, Racing Bulls is the team for junior drivers. It would be his sixth season, and that doesn’t fit together.”
Translated: the ladder worked exactly as designed, just not for him this time. The junior outlet feeds the senior team; it doesn’t become a landing pad for veterans who’ve seen four or five seasons. In the ruthless arithmetic of Red Bull’s pipeline, the long-serving Tsunoda was always going to be the odd one out when the next wave—Hadjar now, Lindblad next—hit the shore.
There’s another wrinkle. Marko’s voice, still unmistakable, carries a different timbre as he heads for the exit. His message is clear—stay sharp, be ready, the phone can ring for any of four cars—but it arrives during a broader reset for Red Bull’s leadership. That’s the sort of season-changing context that can shuffle priorities in ways even the insiders can’t predict.
For Tsunoda, the reserve role isn’t exile so much as purgatory. It can be a career saver—anyone who’s watched a midseason driver shuffle knows that much. Four cars means four chances for illness, injury, form dips or just good old-fashioned politics to open a door. He’ll be in the simulator, in the briefings, on standby. And when you’re quick and compliant and you know the system, you’re only ever a phone call away from a race suit.
Hadjar’s promotion alongside Verstappen is the headline, the latest reminder that Red Bull’s junior program remains the sport’s most unforgiving finishing school. Lawson’s retention at Racing Bulls, meanwhile, gives the team continuity and a proven reference point as it beds in Lindblad. It’s a youth-forward strategy with a familiar Red Bull edge: pick early, commit hard, live with the turbulence.
What stings for Tsunoda is timing. His 2025 story was complicated—early upheaval, big expectations, and the reality of being measured against Verstappen every Sunday. He showed more maturity than his early-career caricature ever suggested, but the bar at Red Bull hasn’t moved an inch. If you’re not forcing the conversation, the conversation moves on without you.
The upside? Tsunoda remains very much in the family. That matters. The reserve label may sound like a downgrade, but at Red Bull it can be a springboard, especially in a season as fluid as 2026 promises to be. Fresh machinery, fresh driver line-ups, fresh headaches—teams like stability when everything else is new, and Tsunoda offers exactly that.
He’ll need patience, and perhaps a little chaos. Red Bull, as ever, will provide both.
