Red Bull to sacrifice performance on Yuki Tsunoda’s car to avoid Liam Lawson repeat

Yuki Tsunoda has made a promising start to his time in Red Bull after a showing a good level of performance in his first practice session in Suzuka, finishing just 0.107 seconds behind team-mate Max Verstappen. As the race weekend gets into full swing, team chief Christian Horner has admitted that they will sacrifice the performance of the RB21 to give Tsunoda a more predictable car.

The Milton Keynes team principal facilitated the replacement of Liam Lawson with Yuki Tsunoda after the former driver showed a poor level of performance over the first two race weekends of the 2025 Formula 1 season. But while the young Japanese driver has already impressed the team, Horner is keen to maintain his confidence by setting the car up differently to reigning champion Verstappen.

“I think we have to provide a different setup,” he told Sky Sports F1. “Max’s ability to extract lap time from the car is unique. And I think that we haven’t seen another driver able to do that in the way that the Max is able to.

“And so therefore, I think you need to give almost a calmer car to whoever is the partner driver, to give a more settled and predictable feel.

“That’s not necessarily the quickest car, but it is definitely a more confidence inspiring car for whichever driver.”

This is an important time for the outfit who are looking to form a solid partnership of drivers for this season after a worrying start. If Tsunoda is able to provide not only strong results, but also valid feedback, the team can turn its attention to improving what is currently a challenging car.

“We’ve already been thinking about setting up the second car differently — with a less aggressive set-up. Something that makes it easier to handle,” Helmut Marko previously disclosed to Motorsport.com. 

The problem with the car primarily relates to its narrow operating window. Horner previously explained the issue the team is fighting at the beginning of the year.

“The engineers have been very focused on how you broaden that window [for the 2025 season], not necessarily adding ultimate performance, but just broadening the window so we’re across the different challenges and have a much wider operating window.”

While Verstappen has so far been able to mask the issues, for the most part, even he is struggling compared to previous seasons. Currently, the driver is sat second in the drivers’ standings, eight points behind leader Lando Norris.