Tsunoda bristles at ‘very harsh’ penalty after Red Bull call to delay Norris in title decider
Yuki Tsunoda’s final Sunday as a Red Bull race driver ended with a shrug, a sigh, and a five-second penalty he insists was over the line.
Tasked with backing up Lando Norris in Abu Dhabi to keep Max Verstappen’s title hopes alive, Tsunoda went on the defensive after Norris’ stop — and the stewards came down on him for it. The Japanese driver was hit with a five-second sanction for making more than one change of direction while defending, plus a penalty point on his licence. He finished 14th.
Norris still sliced past and banked the P3 he needed behind race winner Verstappen and Oscar Piastri, sealing his first F1 world championship by two points. Verstappen, despite eight wins over the season — one more than both Norris and Piastri — leaves Yas Marina as runner-up.
Tsunoda didn’t hide his irritation at the verdict. “I have to review what happened there,” he said post-race. “I kind of have an idea why they applied a penalty, but I need to check if it actually deserved five seconds or not, because it cost my race massively. Everyone was doing it. As usual, it is very harsh.”
On the radio, the tension was obvious. Red Bull urged him to hold Norris up where he could; Tsunoda answered that he knew the assignment. “They were constantly on the radio. You could feel the stress. I said, I know what to do — we talked about it,” he said. “I tried my best to defend as much as possible. There’s no benefit to letting him go easily. But he came very quickly and overtook me.”
Asked if backing Norris up in the final sector a lap earlier might have been the smarter play, Tsunoda said the McLaren was too far back to make it worthwhile. “I thought I could hold on one more lap. He maximised Turns 1-2-3-4-5 and closed the gap. If I slowed down, he probably would have passed me into Turn 1 anyway.”
The penalty capped a chippy weekend between the two. In FP2, Norris arrived on a flat-out approach to Turn 12 to find a slow-moving Tsunoda in the way. Tsunoda apologised with a hand out of the cockpit, but the stewards still acted: Red Bull were fined €10,000 for not warning their driver, and Tsunoda received a formal warning for driving slowly at that part of the track.
Sunday’s weaving call, though, was the flashpoint. Tsunoda joined Lance Stroll and Oliver Bearman in copping five-second penalties for multiple changes of direction, an offence race control has been watching closely in recent rounds. The additional penalty point leaves Tsunoda on eight of a possible 12 in his current window.
It was a messy, slightly melancholy end to Tsunoda’s year in Red Bull colours — at least for now. The team announced before the weekend that he’ll step back to a test-and-reserve role for 2026, with Isack Hadjar graduating to the race seat alongside Verstappen. For a driver who’s never lacked for fight, being deployed as a spoiler in the title decider only to get pinged for it will sting.
To his credit, Tsunoda kept the wider picture in view once the dust settled. He congratulated Norris on the title and Verstappen on the win. “It’s a shame we couldn’t end the year on a high, especially with a frustrating penalty,” he posted on social media. “A big congrats to Lando on the championship and Max on the win.”
The irony, of course, is that Verstappen did almost everything he could: he won the race, led a chunk of laps, and looked as sharp as he has all season. But Norris and McLaren boxed Red Bull in with a clean, unfussy drive to third — exactly the number the new champion needed. The season ends with Verstappen holding more victories; the trophy goes to the man who made fewer missteps when it mattered.
As for Tsunoda, he leaves Yas Marina vowing to revisit the footage and the rulebook. There’s a fair question in there about consistency — plenty of elbows came out in a title shootout — but the stewards have been crystal clear on weaving for weeks. In a finale this tight, the grey areas shrink.
He did his job. He also drew the line the FIA didn’t like. And on a night that belonged to Norris, that was never going to be the headline Red Bull wanted.
