According to McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown, Yuki Tsunoda should not have been in the Racing Bulls car to deliver his impressive Melbourne performance.

That is because Tsunoda should have been in the Red Bull for the F1 2025 season-opening Australian Grand Prix, in Brown’s opinion.

Yuki Tsunoda: Did he deserve Red Bull seat over Lawson?

With Sergio Perez departing Red Bull following the 2024 campaign, it left the task of determining a new team-mate for Max Verstappen, who has developed something of a Red Bull team-mate killer reputation over the years.

A former team-mate of Verstappen’s in Daniel Ricciardo returned to the Red Bull fold with the future goal of re-joining the senior team, but unable to produce the required form, he was let go after last season’s Singapore GP.

Red Bull did have another experienced driver in their ranks, that being Tsunoda who had spent four seasons with their junior team and outperformed Ricciardo.

But, Red Bull opted to go with Ricciardo’s VCARB replacement Liam Lawson, who stepped up to partner defending four-time World Champion Verstappen with only 11 grands prix of experience on the clock.

It was a rough start to Red Bull life for Lawson in Melbourne, as he suffered a Q1 elimination after missing the final practice session due to a power unit issue.

And it was after that Q1 exit for Lawson – while Tsunoda qualified P5 in the VCARB – that McLaren’s Zak Brown took a dig at Red Bull.

“I think it’s going to be a very exciting year,” Brown predicted to Sky F1.

“Yuki did a great job, [he’s] probably the guy that should be in the Red Bull if you look at how he’s performed. But they seem to make some strange driver choices.”

Lawson would spin out of a treacherous, rain-impacted race, while Tsunoda would cross the line P12 as the sole remaining VCARB driver, his rookie team-mate Isack Hadjar having crashed out on the formation lap.

Coming up is another new venue for Lawson as F1 heads to Shanghai for the Chinese Grand Prix, and to further complicate matters, this is the first sprint weekend of F1 2025, meaning Lawson and his F1 peers get just the one practice session.

More from the Australian Grand Prix

👉 Australian GP conclusions: Norris 2.0, the Max factor and why Hamilton needs time

👉 Australian GP driver ratings: Who mastered the storm in Melbourne?

“It was a difficult weekend for him,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner reflected on Lawson’s Australian GP.

“We changed the car so to put a bit more downforce on the car. It’s a very hard track to overtake at. We took the risk of leaving him out, because he was outside of the points, and we thought, ‘You know what, roll the dice, maybe it’ll come right’, but exactly at the point that it started to rain more, so it’s difficult to blame him for that that last spin.

“I think the one flash of light that he can take out of it, is that on the dry tyres, he actually posted the second-fastest lap time of the Grand Prix. Did a [1]:22.9, versus Max’s 23.0, Lando 22.1.

“So I think if there was one positive we can take, [it is] that his pace actually on the dry [tyres] was not too bad.

“The problem is having missed [F]P3, you’re on the back foot, and then, the pressure builds. He grabbed a brake on the second set of tyres, and then the third set of tyres, he was half a second up, and then another mistake there.

“So, I think next weekend will be tough, because it’s a sprint race, at a track that he’s not been to before.

“But, he’s pretty resilient. This weekend wasn’t representative of what he’s capable of.”

McLaren’s Lando Norris ultimately claimed victory in Melbourne, withstanding late pressure from Verstappen to take the chequered flag by less than a second, with Mercedes’ George Russell completing the podium.

Read next: FIA issue strict flexi-wing action with Chinese GP TD