Racing Bulls team boss Laurent Mekies says losing Yuki Tsunoda to Red Bull was a success for his Formula 1 squad despite his fluctuating driver line-ups conflicting with the outfit’s performance targets.
Mekies’ squad has received “super ambitious targets” to fight in F1’s tighter upper midfield, which the team slowly but surely is succeeding in. Strategic decisions have cost the Anglo-Italian outfit points over the first couple of race weekends in 2025, but it has otherwise produced a car capable of fighting for points, a battle decided by extremely slim margins this year as Racing Bulls trades blows with the likes of Williams, Haas, Alpine and Aston Martin.
Another derailing factor has been Red Bull driver merry-go-round, with Racing Bulls ceding Liam Lawson at the start of the year, only to be swapped with Tsunoda after just two races. Speaking on the James Allen on F1 podcast, which you can listen to here, Mekies admitted the team’s task of training drivers for Red Bull could be conflicting with its performance objectives, but saw having both Lawson and Tsunoda promoted to Red Bull as a success.
“Our main objective is competitiveness. Our second objective is to play our part in developing Red Bull drivers,” Mekies told Allen from the team’s new Milton Keynes facility, having moved its UK outpost from Bicester to a new building next to Red Bull’s headquarters.
“Therefore, if and when our drivers are performing well enough to get the attention of the wider Red Bull family to the point to get promoted, it’s a success. Now, sometimes the second objective is conflicting with the first objective, but nonetheless it was a success last year when we put on the table two drivers potentially able to go to Red Bull Racing.
Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls, Yuki Tsunoda, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Peter Fox – Getty Images
“It is a success again for us this year when we see Yuki given the opportunity. And Yuki is a driver that has grown in an incredible way in the last year and a half. We are used to seeing drivers grow in the first two years of their careers. But what Yuki has done in year four and year five has been extraordinary.
“It’s a great moment for Yuki. He deserves it. It’s a great moment for the team to be able to see him moving there, so of course we are very happy.”
In Tsunoda’s stead, Lawson returned to the squad for a third stint, having been up against it from day one to match the Red Bull family’s latest junior product – the highly impressive F2 runner-up Isack Hadjar, who rapidly adapted to the demands of F1.
Lawson qualified ahead of Hadjar for the first time in Saudi Arabia, and the Frenchman acknowledged Lawson had been pushing him all the way throughout the weekend – but otherwise the New Zealander still has work to do to keep pace with him over race stints.
Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls, Laurent Mekies, RB F1 Team
Photo by: Kym Illman – Getty Images
“He’s still the talented guy that was driving for us a few weeks or months ago,” Mekies said. “We completely get how brutal it can be on the sharp end of the grid and we are convinced the speed is there.
“He knows he has the full support. He has been able to digest, learn, and improve with us. And you can see already in Japan, Bahrain, Jeddah; a step forward every race. He was only half a tenth or so from Q3 in Jeddah. We are sure that he’s going to come back to the speed he showed last year.”
