Last Updated on March 30 2025, 11:59 am
With the third round of the 2025 Formula One season in Japan just days away, Red Bull senior management are bracing themselves for a media frenzy. With Liam Lawson dumped back to the Racing Bulls team and Yuki Tsunoda now Max Verstappen’s new team mate, a plethora of details will emerge over the saga the has been the RBR driver lineup.
Tsunoda was many peoples favourite to replace the outgoing Sergio Perez, but the Milton Keynes enclave decided he remained too volatile and instead opted for the apparent level headedness of their New Zealand born driver.
Well level headedness is now out and passion is in as Yuki eagerly anticipates competing in his home Grand Prix in a car capable of claiming the win, or more likely a podium.
Marko blame game rolls on
As the details slowly emerge from Red Bull a number of explanations are beginning to emerge regarding Lawson’s demise. Dr. Helmut Marko not harks back to the Australian Grand Prix and the third practice session where mechanical issues prevented Lawson from getting in much needed track time.
“The third practice session in Australia was cancelled, and that’s where the problems began. That naturally affected Liam’s confidence,” Marko now tells Motorsport.com.
“Unfortunately, things continued in China, which also had a Sprint race – so again, only one practice session,” Marko continued. “And at the same time, we have to acknowledge that the RB21 is difficult to drive. It’s not the fastest car, and the gap in performance just kept growing.”
Hindsight is indeed a wonderful thing but the key to Tsunoda not falling into the same trap as Lawson when he steps into the RB21 this coming weekend is now outlined by ex-F1 driver and Indy500 winner, Juan Pablo Montoya. The Columbian driver believes from his own experience he understands the problems Lawson faced at Red Bull and how Tsunoda can avoid them.
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“I understand that the entire Red Bull [team] is tailored to Max. Everything has been done to make Max comfortable, for what Max wants,” says Montoya. This is a better explanation of the Red Bull modus operandi which is often accused of building their cars to suit Verstappen. RBR technical director Pierre Wache and Adrian Newey before him have insisted their intention is to design the quickest car, not a car to suit a particular driving style.
However, from year to year there is some carryover in the characteristics of each team’s car but it is the week in and week out engineering setup at the huge variety of circuits which has the biggest impact on the direction of in season development of the car.
So whilst the RB21 is a theoretical project, already the engineering expertise around Verstappen will be finding the best setup’s to suit his driving requirements. “Max wants the car to turn. If it’s unstable, he doesn’t care. That it turns, it’s what he wants most, and it’s perfect. The problem is that the other side of the garage also has engineers,” Montoya continues.
The ex-Williams F1 driver (and he was there when the Grove based team was riding high in F1) believes Lawson fell into the trap that any driver would if he felt he couldn’t extract the performance from the car that his team mate is afforded. In those circumstances, a driver is offered the trace from the other side of the garage to examine the differences in the team mates approach to putting together a lap.
Copying Max is not the answer
“I haven’t been there to relay what the philosophy is, but I’m pretty sure that they talked a lot about it [at Red Bull],” Montoya suggests. ‘He’s driving badly, he’s braking badly. Look how Max brakes. Look how Max releases the brake, look how Max moves his hands.’ And the engineer, instead of saying, ‘come on, I’ll change the car,’ the engineer tried to tell him [how to drive].”
Juan Pablo recalls from his own experience how this is the F1 de facto response when a team has one driver who is struggling with the engineering of the car. He claims he marched into Frank Williams office after failing to match the lap times of his team mate Ralf Schumacher, demanding changes.
”I need someone else because I don’t need a coach. I need an engineer. I need someone who, instead of saying I’m driving badly, will change the car for me so I can drive it,” Montoya revealed. He went on to suggest this is the approach Red Bull should take with their new recruit Yuki Tsunoda and specifically instruct his side of the garage to find a setup that allows the Japanese driver to do what he finds natural.
Of course there’s only so much the trackside engineering crew can do in this respect, and F1 drivers since the introduction of ground effect car designs have been talking about being forced to change their driving style. Yet there remains significant differences in how the F1 drivers prefer their cars to work as evidenced in China where Lando Norris dislikes intensely a car which has limited front end grip.
Tsunoda to ease his way in
As an aside, Suzuka is also a front end grip limited track and so again it may be Piastri who shines from the McLaren pairing. The good news for Red Bull is that Yuki Tsunoda is already embracing the fact that he is not there to replicate his team mate’s driving style.
“I don’t want to raise expectations too much, but for this Japanese Grand Prix, I want to finish on the podium. That said, I know it won’t be easy right from the start.” Big ambitions from Yukli which the Japanese fans will hope he can pull off.
“My priority is to first understand the car, how it behaves compared to the VCARB. If I can naturally enjoy driving it as I get familiar with it in FP1, then the results will follow. And if that leads to a podium finish, that would be incredible.”
Yuki revealed he spent two days in the simulator before the announcement of his promotion, and he concluded “I didn’t find the car [RB21] to be that challenging to drive.”
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Yuki wants a different setup to Max
Yet more importantly Tsunoda makes a noteworthy observation which fits with what Montoya is saying in that he has no intention of trying to mimic Max Verstappen’s driving technique.
“If you ask whether it felt tricky to handle, I wouldn’t say it gave me a particularly strange feeling, at least in the simulator. Of course, how I want to set up the car is probably different from Max. I want to develop my own car set-up, get a good understanding of it, and gradually get up to speed from FP1,” said Tsunoda.
The eyes of the F1 world will be on Yuki come next week’s F1 visit to Japan and for now he seems to be revelling in the attention rather than buckling under pressure. When a polite Japanese journalist asked him a question then qualified it stating they didn’t want to add unnecessary pressure, Tsunoda laughed and replied jokingly: “Yes, please pile on the expectations and pressure!”
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It genuinely feels as though Yuki’s time has arrived and he is ready for his debut with the big boys F1 team. Even the disappointment of being overlooked initially to replace Perez appears to have strengthened Tsunoda’s psyche, something he will need to remain strong as he becomes Verstappen’s sixth team mate since 2018.
Yuki scored his first F1 points at the Suzuka track last year and having claimed top ten starts in the first three qualifying rounds of this season, the Japanese driver will be brimming with confidence as he enters the predictable maul awaiting him in the F1 paddock.
There is an outside chance Tsunoda could make the podium next Sunday, which is an improvement from the ‘unlikely prospect’ of such an outcome whilst he was driving for the Red Bull sister outfit.
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Sergio Perez closed out his Formula One career with a disappointing DNF in Abu Dhabi. There was no big farewell organised at the Yas Marina Circuit as the Mexican continued to insist he would be driving for Red Bull this year.
Regardless whether it was Checo’s age or the tricky handling RB20 became a moot point, as the Mexican driver scored just 2 points over the final ten Grand Prix weekends. Something had to be done and it began with Perez’s dismissal from the Red Bull team.
There may have been other F1 teams interested in Sergio’s skill set, but by the time Red Bull completed their deliberations, all seats on the grid were filled for 2025. Perez has stayed largely silent this season other than to speak at a Mexican wheel and tyre company promotion where he said: “I have given myself six months to see what options I have to decide on the next step in my career. The doors are open in many places, so I want to give myself the time and space to make the best decision.”… READ MORE
With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
