Isack Hadjar sends brilliant one-word message to Yuki Tsunoda before Red Bull debut at Japanese Grand Prix

Yuki Tsunoda will be making his Red Bull debut at Suzuka, having been promoted by the team after just two races for Liam Lawson.

Red Bull’s brutal decision-making has been the talk of the F1 paddock ahead of the Japanese GP after the 23-year-old finished P15 and was a second off the pace of teammate Max Verstappen.

Tsunoda will offer the team more experience after they struggled with exploiting performance from their RB21, while Christian Horner has told Lawson to regain his confidence at Racing Bulls.

Ahead of his debut with Red Bull, former teammate Isack Hadjar has sent Tsunoda a message on Instagram after he posted his thanks to the Racing Bulls team.

Isack Hadjar sends Yuki Tsunoda one-word message on Instagram

Tsunoda has been with Racing Bulls since 2021, having made his debut when the team was called AlphaTauri alongside Pierre Gasly.

Gasly believes Tsunoda has improved in the last four years, while Sergio Perez also backs the Japanese driver to do well for the team.

Hadjar sent his former teammate a simple message of good luck in Japanese in a comment on his Instagram post: “Gambateru” which translates to the phrase “Do well” in English.

There will be a lot of pressure on Tsunoda to pull a result out of the box on his debut with the top team, especially in front of his home fans.

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Lawson’s performance was criticised by Mark Webber because of the gulf in results between him and Verstappen.

Tsunoda has less experience in the RB21 but has driven its predecessor in the post-season test in Abu Dhabi, while he also picked up on some of its deficiencies in the simulator.

Red Bull expects Tsunoda to be within 0.3s of Verstappen on a constant basis, which would mean the Japanese driver needs at least a top-six finish at Suzuka.

Honda is reportedly paying millions to have Tsunoda in the seat until the rest of the season, although F1 Oversteer understands Red Bull is open to another swap this year.