Yuki Tsunoda says he left Liam Lawson a ‘stunning car’ at Racing Bulls in 2025

Follow us on Google Discover

Yuki Tsunoda suspects he would have delivered his ‘strongest season’ in Formula 1 if he had stayed at Racing Bulls in 2025, rather than moving to Red Bull early in the season.

Tsunoda was promoted to Red Bull just two races into the season after Liam Lawson’s disastrous start. Despite the seat swap, it was Lawson who stayed in F1 for 2026.

After finishing 17th in the world championship, the lowest position for a Red Bull driver since David Coulthard in 2008, Tsunoda lost his seat to Isack Hadjar and has now been relegated to a reserve role.

Yuki Tsunoda says his ‘DNA’ was in ‘stunning’ 2025 Racing Bulls car

As he revealed after the driver reshuffle was announced, Tsunoda’s only regret was missing out on the highly-rated Racing Bulls car for the whole season.

Racing Bulls finished sixth in the world championship last year on 92 points, with Isack Hadjar scoring a podium at the Dutch Grand Prix – the team’s first since the 2021 Azerbaijan GP (via Pierre Gasly).

Tsunoda took some credit for Hadjar’s podium finish because of his contribution to car development across four full seasons with the team.

In an interview with the official F1 website ahead of what would have been his home Grand Prix in Japan, he once again pondered what might have been if Red Bull had never called.

Is Hadjar a better fit for Red Bull than Lawson or Tsunoda?

Comment

Like or Comment

Have your say Sign-in now for free

He said: “In 2025, I had the best start of any season – I was P5 in qualifying in Australia, and I was P6 in the Sprint in China. It’s a generation of car that I’d spent three years in, and part of it, for sure, was coming from my DNA.

“I gave a lot of feedback, and how the car was made was mostly how I requested it to the team. It was a stunning car.

“If I’d stayed at Racing Bulls, it probably would have been my strongest season, but at the same time, I had a good opportunity to move to Red Bull. It was the moment I had been waiting for – for a long time.

“It was also very, very special to jump in at my home Grand Prix in Japan… Definitely the biggest highlight in my life.”

Isack Hadjar has already done something Yuki Tsunoda never managed at Red Bull

Hadjar has only scored four points so far, having retired from the season opener in Australia after a mechanical failure. The Frenchman looks unlikely to score podiums or fight for wins in the near future, given Red Bull’s struggles.

But while the sample size is small, he has been notably closer to Verstappen than his predecessors. Hadjar was only a tenth behind the four-time world champion in Chinese GP qualifying.

There’s a school of thought that the rule changes have helped Hadjar, effectively resetting the notoriously tricky handling characteristics of the Red Bull. The new energy management protocols have arguably reduced the emphasis on driver talent, too.

But Hadjar is clearly quick in his own right. He has reached Q3 in three straight qualifying sessions, something Tsunoda never managed. In fact, one has to go back to September 2024 for the last time Red Bull’s second driver delivered such a streak.