Liam Lawson may be sitting in the Red Bull RB21 right now while Yuki Tsunoda occupies the Racing Bulls, but Bernie Collins is intrigued to see if that continues as the year “is far from done”.

Last year, having decided to call time on Sergio Perez’s stint in Milton Keynes, Red Bull decided to promote Lawson ahead of Tsunoda despite the latter seeing off Daniel Ricciardo before getting the better of Lawson in their six races together.

Liam Lawson v Yuki Tsunoda: ‘There will be questions to answer’

Red Bull though, felt Lawson had more potential for growth.

However, after Australia, the season-opening Grand Prix for the F1 2025 championship, it was Tsunoda who put in the better performance.

Qualifying his Racing Bulls up in fifth place, the Japanese driver saw the chequered flag although he was outside the points. That, by the team’s admission, was because of a botched strategy from the pit wall, not the driver’s performance.

As for Lawson, he didn’t make it out of Q1 having made two small mistakes on his final flying lap of the session and then crashed out of the Grand Prix in the wet.

F1 2025 head-to-head stats

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

Collins, a former Aston Martin strategist turned Sky F1 analyst, believes Formula 1 may not have seen the last of the Red Bull driver moves in the F1 2025 championship.

Asking the question “what do they see in Lawson over” Tsunoda, she continued: “We see the lap times on track, the performances, and some radio communications. Tsunoda has definitely improved his calmness. From the outside, I agree.

“But we don’t see what goes on in the engineering debriefs, what they feed back to the team, how they work with the team.

“I don’t see anything to say that Tsunoda shouldn’t get the drive.

“It is unusual from Red Bull, at this stage. But the year is far from done… we will see how it progresses.”

Tsunoda admitted in the build-up to the Australian Grand Prix that he was frustrated by Red Bull’s decision as he didn’t understand why he was passed over.

“I still don’t know why, I still don’t fully understand what caused this decision,” said the Japanese driver.

“But I would say I understand more about Formula 1 now. I mean, I understand part of the decision. But I just… don’t follow. I just stopped trying to follow the reason. The more I think about it, the more I start to get confused.

“I was never really the first contender. It was always some other driver. You know, I just beat Daniel, and still… whoever comes in next to me, he’s the one who gets considered first – even though he hasn’t raced much [in F1] yet. So in those situations, yeah, I was definitely frustrated. And that’s why, partly, the decision doesn’t make sense at all.”

He added: “I just focus on the future, on trying to be a more complete driver in general – not to give them, or any other team, a reason to say, ‘Oh, you’re not good at this’ or ‘You’re not good at that – so we don’t take you.’”

And focusing on himself and his own performance is exactly what he needs to do according to Collins.

“He’s got to keep putting performances in,” she said. “He’s doing that. His qualifying was very impressive.

“If that car out-qualifies the No2 Red Bull car, there will be questions to answer. He will hope it continues for many weekends to come.”

Read next: Zak Brown makes Max Verstappen move prediction F1 2026 ‘bet’