Gasly hints at unsaid truths behind Tsunoda’s Red Bull battle
Pierre Gasly has seen this movie before. Watching his former teammate Yuki Tsunoda wrestle with Red Bull’s notorious second seat, the Alpine driver says he knows more than he can share — and that, in the real world of F1 team politics and development priorities, not everything is as simple as “just drive faster.”
“What’s tricky is my time, a lot of things can’t be said, because you’re a driver, you’re working for a team, and as a professional, you can’t share all the information on the specific situations,” Gasly told RacingNews365. “Talking with Yuki, I know some stuff that can’t be said, and it’s not easy. It’s not easy to be in this situation.”
If anyone gets it, it’s Gasly. Six years on from his own short, bruising stint alongside Max Verstappen, the Frenchman remains the original reference point for a seat that’s become infamous. Back in 2019 he arrived undercooked, crashed in testing, copped public flak from Helmut Marko, and never found the rhythm. Twelve races later he was sent back to what was then AlphaTauri, rebuilt himself admirably, and eventually moved on to Alpine.
Tsunoda’s turn in the hot seat came this year. He climbed into the second RB21 at his home race in Japan, replacing Liam Lawson after two Grands Prix, and the task since has been as unforgiving as it looks from the outside. Across the same stretch, Verstappen has hoovered up points and podiums; Tsunoda’s haul has been slim by comparison, leaving his long‑term prospects under the microscope as Red Bull weighs its 2026 plans. The team has assured him he’ll see out the season, but the bigger decision — whether he stays for next year — is the one that matters.
The narrative around that car is familiar: is the Red Bull fundamentally tailored to Verstappen? Max has pushed back on the idea, and the team has too, but the perception won’t go away when drivers on the other side of the garage repeatedly struggle to match him. Gasly doesn’t wade into that debate directly. He doesn’t need to. Instead, he points to the opaque realities inside a top team: the way development flows, how updates land, the compromises that favor one approach over another — and what that does to a driver’s confidence and toolbox.
“You try to do what’s best for the team, and sometimes you get given something to make it work, and sometimes you’re in a situation where, for different reasons, it can’t quite work the way you like,” he said.
That’s the crux. Most of the friction never leaves the debrief room. On paper it’s lap time and points. In practice it’s setup windows, brake feel, aero sensitivities, the car’s behavior at corner entry — the thousand‑cut stuff that can bury a driver when the reference on the other side of the garage is Verstappen, who extracts pace from an envelope others can’t touch.
Gasly’s not offering a magic fix, just counsel. “Knowing from experience, I just try to chat as a friend and just advise on stuff that may help him,” he added. “Ultimately
