Yuki Tsunoda failed to score any points at the 2025 Mexican Grand Prix, but his performance still left Red Bull happy. “Yuki had his best weekend in a long time. We’ve said that many times – but this time it’s really true,” says Red Bull team boss Laurent Mekies.
An eleventh place rarely causes excitement in Formula 1, but in the case of Tsunoda, Red Bull is making an exception. Naturally, the Japanese has a difficult time in the second Red Bull: against four-time world champion Max Verstappen the score is 0:21 in qualifying (including sprint qualifying), and in the points ranking the ratio is also clear at 25:285.
In Mexico, Tsunoda missed out on Q3 for the 15th time this season (including sprint qualifying), but was 0.211 seconds behind Verstappen, as close as ever.
At the start he gained two positions and was in eighth place after the first lap.
Then Red Bull extended his stint significantly until lap 36 in order to slow down the leading group (Piastri, Antonelli, Russell, Hamilton) by having them pass him. So he should help Verstappen. But when changing tires, Tsunoda lost around nine seconds – too much to score points in the end: only 3.6 seconds were missing from ninth place (Esteban Ocon).
“Those were easy points,” said Tsunoda angrily at Sky. “Unfortunately, the pit stop was what it was. But it wasn’t just that. There were one or two things that I had addressed that I couldn’t avoid or save – that’s all I can say about it. To be honest, it was very frustrating. It was largely out of my control. And what I could control, I maximized.”
In fact, Red Bull sees the Japanese’s performance much more positively than the result suggests. “He was very close to Max in qualifying – two tenths, I think,” said Mekies.
“He was also very strong in the first stint, two to three tenths behind Max with the same tire strategy.” In real terms, the gap was on average just over four tenths if lapping and traffic were taken into account.
“After that, to be fair, we left him out a little longer because it was strategically advantageous for us, and then there was a slow pit stop. So we basically took away a few points from him that he would have earned.”
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The team boss further explains why Red Bull is taking its time with the driver decision for 2026: “Yuki is making progress, but the other guys are also making progress. There is no reason to rush into anything. We will take our time.”
Red Bull actually wanted to determine the future driver pairing – both for the works team and for Racing Bulls – around this time. But there are two problems: Firstly, no driver has yet been found who can even come close to challenging Verstappen.
Neither Gasly, Albon, Perez, Lawson nor Tsunoda have managed this in the last seven years. Isack Hadjar is currently the favorite for the second Red Bull seat after attracting attention with strong performances at Racing Bulls.
On the other hand, Red Bull would like to support Junior Arvid Lindblad, who is currently in seventh place in the overall Formula 2 standings. But who should be replaced – Lawson or Tsunoda – is an open question.
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Lindblad was allowed to drive Verstappen’s Red Bull RB21 for the first time in Mexico in the first free practice session – and was the fastest rookie, seven tenths ahead of the rest. He even beat Tsunoda, although the training session was of course not representative.
“He did a great job,” praises Mekies. “It’s incredibly difficult to jump into FP1. You hardly have any tires, hardly any laps – it’s completely different to a test day. But he was calm, precise, didn’t damage the car and gave very good feedback. That really impressed us. We’re already looking forward to his next outing towards the end of the year.”
And on the driver question, Mekies concludes: “We know that everyone is waiting for a decision, but we have no reason to rush. We want to give everyone the maximum chance to show who is the best on the track.”