Red Bull’s Christian Horner has clarified the extent of Adrian Newey’s involvement in driver decision-making for the F1 2025 season.

Red Bull opted for Liam Lawson initially for the F1 2025 season, passing over the more experienced Yuki Tsunoda – only to swap the two drivers after two race weekends due to the extent of Lawson’s struggles to adapt to the RB21.

Helmut Marko suggests Adrian Newey input behind Yuki Tsunoda snub

With Tsunoda having been part of Red Bull’s driver line-up for four seasons, as the Japanese driver raced for AlphaTauri/Racing Bulls, the overlooking of Tsunoda was conspicuous given the longevity of his career and his obvious maturation – Tsunoda scored two-thirds of Racing Bulls’ points tally in F1 2024.

But while Tsunoda may have been the more obvious choice for the vacant Red Bull seat for this year, it was felt internally that Lawson’s hinted-at potential – combined with a strong mindset – would make him a good teammate for Max Verstappen.

Of course, it hasn’t played out that way, and Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko suggested that Tsunoda has been overlooked for some time due to input from the team’s former chief technical officer Adrian Newey.

Newey, who was with the team between 2007 and 2024 and oversaw the designs of all their championship-winning machines, went on gardening leave in May 2024 and has since joined the Aston Martin team.

Newey’s anger at an incident between Tsunoda and then-AlphaTauri teammate Pierre Gasly in 2022, which also led to damage to Verstappen’s Red Bull, was part of the reason Tsunoda was overlooked in the past, according to Marko.

“For a long time, Yuki had the image of not performing consistently and making silly mistakes here and there. That’s what happened last year in Mexico, where the decisive phase for us began,” Marko told Austria’s Kleine Zeitung.

“With Lawson, it was the exact opposite at first: he came on and delivered straight away, no matter how great the pressure was. In retrospect, however, it wasn’t the right decision.

“In general, however, a lot can be traced back to a single incident.

At Silverstone, Tsunoda once drove into Pierre Gasly’s car, and parts of the cars on the track damaged the underbody of Verstappen’s car, which cost him the race. Adrian Newey was furious at the time.

“From that point on, Yuki was a red rag to him. But now Newey is gone, and Yuki has worked hard on himself.”

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While Newey’s input may have been taken into consideration while a full-fledged member of the team, Marko’s comments led to Newey’s wife Amanda intervening on social media to clarify that the designer had not had any say in the matter for the choice for F1 2025, given that he was on gardening leave.

Addressing the situation during Sky Sports F1’s coverage in Suzuka, team boss Christian Horner clarified the timeline:

“Adrian wasn’t involved in drivers certainly for this year.

“I think from the comments I saw that Helmut was referring to an incident back in 2022 at Silverstone. Adrian had no input into our driver selection for this year.”

Newey officially announced his departure from Red Bull – after nearly two decades with the team – ahead of the 2024 Miami Grand Prix.

It was during Newey’s garden leave that Red Bull made the decision to replace Sergio Perez, opting for Lawson to partner Verstappen. Lawson has now been moved into the Racing Bulls line-up, with Tsunoda taking part in his first race weekend for Red Bull this weekend at Suzuka.

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