Alex Albon reveals the ‘very sad’ Yuki Tsunoda pre-season prediction he made for the 2025 season

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Yuki Tsunoda is set to be the only driver on the 2025 Formula 1 grid who won’t be returning next season with a full-time race seat.

Red Bull decided after the Qatar Grand Prix that it was time to part ways with Yuki Tsunoda before he had even completed a full campaign with the team.

Tsunoda arrived at Red Bull without any testing after Liam Lawson’s stuttering start to the year, but only managed seven top 10 Grand Prix finishes in 22 races.

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Lawson and Tsunoda’s pace was relatively similar despite the New Zealander’s record-breaking stint with the team.

Isack Hadjar has already been offered plenty of advice on how to deal with Max Verstappen’s teammate, something that many drivers have failed to cope with.

Tsunoda has now started more than 100 Grand Prix, and his old Red Bull colleague and Williams driver Alex Albon has been speaking about the 25-year-old.

Albon thought Tsunoda being dropped by Red Bull was harsh, and has now revealed his pre-season prediction for the Japanese driver, as well as a look into his racing future.

READ MORE: Red Bull reserve driver Yuki Tsunoda’s life outside F1 from height to parents

Alex Albon ‘very sad’ after predicting a 2025 Formula 1 podium for Yuki Tsunoda

Speaking on Formula 1’s official YouTube channel, Albon said: “My wildcard prediction for the 2025 season is a Yuki Tsunoda podium.

“That did not happen. It’s kind of sad, and in fact, he’s not racing next year, so that’s very sad!

“I mean, I’m a Yuki fanboy, so Yuki’s going to come back, he’s going to get his podium.

“I’m going to get my podium, and then we’re going to all look back at this fondly.”

Where did you expect Yuki Tsunoda to finish when he joined Red Bull?

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What’s more surprising about Albon’s prediction is that he made it while Tsunoda was still driving for Racing Bulls.

The Red Bull sister team did earn that top-three finish through Hadjar at Zandvoort, but Tsunoda ducks out of Formula 1, sitting fourth on the list of most races without a podium finish.

READ MORE: Williams star Alex Albon’s life outside F1 with net worth, girlfriend to parents

What went wrong for Yuki Tsunoda at Red Bull in 2025?

Tsunoda appeared to be confident going into his Red Bull debut at Suzuka, given it was a track he knew very well.

He could only qualify 15th and could only recover to 12th at a circuit where overtaking was incredibly difficult.

From there, Tsunoda never truly closed the gap to Verstappen, albeit he was only a couple of tenths off the four-time world champion in plenty of sessions.

Tsunoda believes decisions Christian Horner made when he was team principal didn’t help, but a crash at Imola in qualifying left him using older parts than Verstappen until Laurent Mekies arrived.

While many of Verstappen’s previous teammates have been too far off him in qualifying, Tsunoda’s issue has been race pace.

The condensed nature of the grid in 2025 has meant that even when the 25-year-old was marginally slower than Verstappen over one lap, that could end up being the difference between reaching the top 10 shootout and being eliminated in Q2, or even Q1.

The hope for Red Bull will be that under the new regulations that Hadjar can more closely match Verstappen across a race weekend.

For Tsunoda, he now has to hope that 2026 plays out in a similar way to 2025 and enhances his reputation while not being on the grid in the same way it helped Sergio Perez as he prepares to make a comeback with Cadillac.