The Red Bull Racing driver situation has finally played out and both they and Racing Bulls will have new driver pairings for 2025.
Max Verstappen will be joined at Red Bull by Liam Lawson after the Kiwi impressed across two spells with RB during the 2023 and 2024 seasons.
It means that Yuki Tsunoda has once again missed out on promotion to the senior team after four years of trying to make that final step in his career.
He will be joined by Formula 2 runner-up Isack Hadjar in 2025 in what could be the most explosive driver pairing in F1 history.
Hadjar is known for being aggressive on the team radio and Tsunoda’s never been the calmest driver in his cockpit.
However, the Japanese driver has been working on this aspect of his racing as he tried to do everything he could to prove to Red Bull he was worthy of a seat alongside Verstappen.
Unfortunately, even though Tsunoda was excellent in a post-season test for Red Bull, he was overlooked once again, bringing his long-term future with the team under scrutiny.
Three F1 teams were interested in Yuki Tsunoda before extending Racing Bulls contract
A report from the Japanese outlet as-web has shared more details about Tsunoda’s contract situation this year.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has shared that Tsunoda may have to think about his future after missing out on another promotion to an RB rival.
Horner said after the Lawson announcement, via ESPN, about Tsunoda’s future: “We’re acutely aware that if we’re not able to provide an opportunity for Yuki [at Red Bull] in all honesty this year, does it [keeping him on] make sense?
“You can’t have a driver in the support team for five years.
“You can’t always be the bridesmaid. You’ve either got to let them go at that point or look at something different.”
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The report from as-web suggests that Tsunoda has ‘had his eye’ on other teams in the paddock for several years now.
His management spoke to Alpine, Sauber and Haas this year about potentially switching teams for 2025.
Each team reportedly offered Tsunoda a ‘long-term’ contract, however, at the time, Tsunoda was in the form of his life.
The 24-year-old was comfortably sitting in the top 10 of the Drivers’ Championship, and Red Bull therefore ‘refused to let him go’, extending his deal for one more year.
Yuki Tsunoda reaching the tipping points of his F1 career after Red Bull snub
As Horner mentioned above, a driver shouldn’t be spending five years in what is essentially Red Bull’s development team.
However, they wanted to protect their asset going into 2025 with Sergio Perez and Daniel Ricciardo both failing to reach expectations.
All three teams that were interested in Tsunoda ended up changing their line-ups for next year, suggesting that their interest in the Japanese driver was legitimate.
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Tsunoda’s connections with Honda potentially earned him a race seat back in 2021, but may have hampered him in the long run.
There have been suggestions that Tsunoda will leave RB in 2025 no matter what happens next year.
Honda will become Aston Martin’s exclusive power unit supplier, but whether the Japanese driver can poach a race seat from Fernando Alonso or Lance Stroll is yet to be seen.
