Yuki Tsunoda is the latest driver to encounter choppy waters in the second Red Bull, and Alex Albon offered his thoughts on why.

Formerly a driver for both the Red Bull junior and senior F1 teams – like Tsunoda – Albon stated that when a driver makes that step up, they go from driving a “forgiving” car built with rookies in-mind, to the other “extreme” with a Red Bull Racing car, one that Max Verstappen “can drive”.

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In recent years Red Bull has run into a familiar headache when it comes to trying to find a driver capable of being the ideal supporting act to their reigning four-time World Champion Max Verstappen.

Pierre Gasly, Albon and Sergio Perez took on the task but all found themselves exiting the seat, while in F1 2025, Liam Lawson lasted only two race weekends as Verstappen’s team-mate before Tsunoda was called-up from the junior Racing Bulls team to take his place.

However, Tsunoda has struggled to make a positive impression since his promotion, scoring just seven points in eight rounds, as Red Bull sit P4 in the Constructors’ Championship standings, 212 points behind runaway leaders McLaren.

Albon spent a year-and-a-half as Verstappen’s Red Bull team-mate between 2019-20, and ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix, was asked for his take on the continued struggles encountered in the second Red Bull, Tsunoda the latest to underwhelm.

He responded: “I think the cars are on a knife edge. I think Max can drive it.

“Obviously I can speak from experience, I struggled a bit. I think with the experience I have now, I’d be able to get around it, but it’s not something that feels that natural to most drivers. I think that’s what you’re seeing now.

“I think that it’s also difficult because, partly, maybe it’s my own interpretation of it, the RB is quite a forgiving car. I mentioned it before in 2019, it’s quite well balanced, it’s very stable. Gives you a lot of confidence.

“And I think it’s naturally become that kind of car because they always have rookies. The foundations of the team is built on young drivers.

“And then the Red Bull is almost the extreme, and you go from one of the cars that are forgiving, to tricky, in the most simple sense. And so you’re having to adapt quite a lot to two very different cars.”

At that point, Albon was asked to expand on his claim that with the experience he has now, he could get around those difficulties.

Albon spent a season as Red Bull reserve after losing his race seat but returned to the grid in 2022 with Williams, where he has re-built his career in impressive fashion.

Albon found himself alongside four-time grand prix winner Carlos Sainz as his new Williams team-mate from F1 2025, though Albon has so far put 42 points on the board to Sainz’s 13.

“I think the driving side is a part of it, especially all the smaller parts of it. The bigger part of it is understanding the cars, the tyres, the engineering side of things, your own driving style as well, these kind of things,” Albon added.

“Which, when you start as a young driver, even in F1, you’re still discovering what makes the car click. What makes me click. What compromises or lack of compromises can you do to help me or not in that situation.

“Clearly Max can drive that car, and he likes it a particular way. It’s supposed to be the quickest way, and he gets on with it, and he can drive and make that lap time out of it.

“And so there’s a bit of that going on. And it’s also the most simple thing is dealing with all the noise of being that number two driver. It’s not easy for a young driver.”

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Tsunoda was given a 10-place grid penalty in Canada for passing the McLaren of Championship leader Oscar Piastri under red flag conditions, and despite a recovery to P12, that made it three race weekends without a point for the Japanese racer.

Nonetheless, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was not too disappointed with what he saw.

Speaking about Tsunoda following the Canadian GP, Horner said: “I thought his race was actually… To do a one-stop on that tyre, and once you’ve gone through the graining, the tyres cleaned up again, I thought he actually did a decent job.

“You can see how hard overtaking is here, so actually, I thought Yuki should have taken some confidence out of it. If he’d have started in his normal grid position that he qualified [11th] he would have scored points.”

Though when it comes to Tsunoda extracting performance from the Red Bull RB21, Horner feels it is a case of: “Try and avoid what other drivers have gone down the route of, of trying to adopt Max’s set-up, to go his own route, and work on what suits his style and his needs.

“And I think they’ve made some progress on that this weekend.”

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