Jolyon Palmer says Red Bull staff have been left ‘bamboozled’ by something they’ve seen in Yuki Tsunoda’s data

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Red Bull Racing driver Yuki Tsunoda needs to impress at the upcoming British Grand Prix.

On his previous four visits to the British Grand Prix in his Formula 1 career, Yuki Tsunoda has only scored two points.

The 25-year-old finished 10th on his first visit to Silverstone, and matched that result last season, but Red Bull will be expecting far more this time around.

Tsunoda has only scored seven points in his first nine races as a Red Bull driver.

Both Racing Bulls drivers, Isack Hadjar and Liam Lawson, have now leapfrogged the Japanese star in the drivers’ championship, putting further pressure on Christian Horner’s latest number two racer.

Tsunoda’s F1 future is at risk, and he’s currently out of contract at the end of the 2025 season.

Jolyon Palmer has been looking at Tsunoda’s performances since his promotion and was left surprised by one aspect of his struggles.

The 25-year-old and his Red Bull colleagues have been equally confused by why he’s finding it so difficult to get close to Verstappen.

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Jolyon Palmer ‘bamboozled’ by Yuki Tsunoda’s lack of pace at Red Bull

Palmer was speaking to Formula 1’s official website about Tsunoda and said: “Looking at Yuki’s Qualifying laps recently, there aren’t any obvious errors in there. He’s not hanging on to the car or losing chunks of time in any particular corner.

“If anything, as a driver, it’s nicer to come back from a disappointing session and see that a mistake here or there cost you, because it’s something tangible.

“You can put your finger on it, see what you did wrong and work out how much it cost. You can also figure out changes to your driving style to correct it.

“In Yuki’s case, at the moment, there aren’t any obvious errors to point at, which is why both he and the team are left bamboozled at his lack of pace.

“His crash at the start of Imola Qualifying looked like a case of a driver trying to reset heading into a crucial session after a difficult run of practices. He’d looked through the data and was determined to attack from the first lap.

“Unfortunately, in attacking, he tried to do the impossible, lumped over the kerbs at high speed and was pitched into his dramatic crash. The car is so difficult to drive that, in desperation for performance, it’s easy to overdrive and crash.

“But the alternative is then what happened in Barcelona and Austria – to underdrive, or have the car be too sedate and be slow.

“Tsunoda has said he’ll delve into the data with his engineers and try to understand what is going on, but history says it’s not going to be easy to fix.

“After all, this is an issue that has impacted multiple drivers in multiple Red Bull cars over multiple sets of regulations.”

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Ralf Schumacher thinks Yuki Tsunoda’s Formula 1 career is ‘over’

The pressure of trying to be Verstappen’s teammate has been too much for plenty of Formula 1 drivers in the past.

The likes of Alex Albon and Pierre Gasly have gone on to have very successful careers after failing to make the grade at Red Bull.

However, Ralf Schumacher thinks Tsunoda’s F1 career is ‘over’ as he doesn’t see another team picking him up at the end of the season.

The nature of the F1 driver market this season makes it a bad time to lose your seat, given how many drivers signed multi-year contracts last year.

The 25-year-old may only have a few races left to convince Red Bull’s chiefs that he has what it takes to earn another season with the team.