Although Yuki Tsunoda acknowledges his comments about the RB20 suiting his style that he made last season were a “sales pitch”, having had a small taste of the RB21 in the simulator, he doesn’t believe it is a particularly “tricky” car.

Tsunoda will step into Liam Lawson’s vacated RB21 at Suzuka this week after Red Bull swapped the two drivers following contrasting fortunes in the early rounds of the F1 2025 season.

Yuki Tsunoda has shared his first impression of the RB21

While Lawson suffered three Q1 eliminations and failed to score a single point, Tsunoda has been a constant feature inside qualifying’s top ten and scored three points with Racing Bulls.

Red Bull are pinning their hopes on him maintaining that form when he climbs into the RB21 at this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix.

The car, though, has been billed as a more difficult beast to the Racing Bulls.

“It’s just a very small window,” Lawson said of the Red Bull car’s sensitivity. “It’s hard to drive, to get it in that window.”

Even Helmut Marko accepted this, telling OE24: “It is true that the RB21 is difficult to drive. he Racing Bulls is much easier to drive and very fast in a single qualifying lap. But the difference is that in the race, the Racing Bulls are always slower and behind us.”

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It begs the question, how will Tsunoda get on this weekend?

Conceding that his 2024 comments about the RB20 after the Abu Dhabi test were “a bit of a sales pitch”, the Japanese driver remains bullish about his prospects as he was “able to drive it normally right away, so in that sense I do feel like it suits me”.

It’s a feeling he also has with the RB21, although he’s only driven that in the simulator.

“I spent about two days in the simulator [with the 2025 car],” Tsunoda said as per Motorsport.com during a Honda event at the company’s Aoyama headquarters. “From that experience, I didn’t find the car to be that challenging to drive.

“I definitely got the impression that the front-end is very responsive, as people often say.

“But if you ask whether it felt tricky to handle, I wouldn’t say it gave me a particularly strange feeling, at least in the simulator.

“Of course, how I want to set up the car is probably different from Max. I want to develop my own car set-up, get a good understanding of it, and gradually get up to speed from FP1.”

After four years of racing with Red Bull’s junior team, Tsunoda will make his Red Bull debut at his home race with the 24-year-old revealing it was an unexpected call-up.

“To be honest, I never expected to be racing for Red Bull at the Japanese Grand Prix,” he said. “This is the final year of Red Bull and Honda’s partnership, so getting to race in Suzuka as a Red Bull Racing driver feels like fate. Everything has fallen into place in just the right way for me to be standing here today.

“Of course, I was happy about joining Red Bull, but when I thought about it carefully, the idea of suddenly racing for Red Bull at the Japanese Grand Prix felt so unreal.

“I don’t want to raise expectations too much, but for this Japanese Grand Prix, I want to finish on the podium. That said, I know it won’t be easy right from the start.

“My priority is to first understand the car, how it behaves compared to the VCARB. If I can naturally enjoy driving it as I get familiar with it in FP1, then the results will follow. And if that leads to a podium finish, that would be incredible.”

“When I first got the call, I thought: ‘Wow, this is going to be interesting,’” he added. “More than anything, I’m excited about the challenge ahead.

“There aren’t many moments in life where you face this kind of extreme pressure and an opportunity as big as this, so I can only imagine that it’s going to be an incredibly thrilling race.”

Tsunoda says he’s ready to deal with the pressure. “Yes, please pile on the expectations and pressure!”

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