What Yuki Tsunoda has learned alongside Max Verstappen

The championship standings tell of a Red Bull in third place, the only team able to break McLaren’s domination at the start to this F1 world championship, thanks to Max Verstappen’s victory at the Japanese GP. And yet, the start of the season for the Milton Keynes stable has not been so straightforward and simple, thanks to an RB21 that has not exactly given the expected feedback.

The aim was to simplify the RB20 and widen the operating window in an attempt to expand the set-up options for the team and drivers. However, despite some small improvements overall, the RB21 proved to be a complex and difficult car to drive, which is hampering Yuki Tsunoda, who arrived at Red Bull to replace a struggling Liam Lawson after only two races.

Right from the first laps at Suzuka, Tsunoda gave positive indications, however, confirming that he could at least climb out of the bottom ranks of the classification – where, on the contrary, Lawson had been bogged down in both Australia and China, without showing any obvious progress. The Japanese driver has been able to digest certain characteristics of the RB21 better, although the adaptation period is far from over.

This is also one of the reasons why Red Bull is singing his praises, also considering the pressure on his shoulders in being catapulted into a new environment and against Verstappen. His goal for Red Bull is not to beat Verstappen, but to stay within a certain gap that allows him to get into the top 10 and earn points, which he would have managed to do in Jeddah without the first-lap clash with Alpine’s Pierre Gasly.

Compared to Red Bull, the Racing Bulls clearly have less load and lower performance peaks, but they have a wider operating window, which allows the drivers and engineers to bring the VCARB 02 to the limit more easily.

Analysing Tsunoda’s performance in qualifying with Red Bull so far, some interesting elements emerge, both in the confrontation with Verstappen and in extracting the maximum from the car.

Mistakes arise from not fully understanding the RB21

Tsunoda struggled to put all the pieces of the jigsaw together during his final Q2 run in Japan, so much so that he was unable to improve on his time. In Bahrain he paid the price for a mistake at the Turn 10 hairpin, while in Saudi Arabia an error coming out of Turn 4 weighed heavily.

Those mistakes are reminiscent of the same ‘adaptation’ path experienced by Lawson, who, in his two qualifying runs with the RB21, never managed to complete his last attempt without making a mistake, confirming how much he was on the limit.

Right from the start, the Japanese driver was struck by the extreme responsiveness of the front end of the Red Bull, which is much more sensitive than that of the Racing Bulls – and this, as is normal, requires a period of assimilation.

Analysing his first two weekends at Red Bull, Verstappen and Tsunoda raced with different downforce levels: the Japanese carried more load in order to find more consistency in the car’s behaviour, while the Dutchman, even with his previous team-mates, was able to deal with a more unloaded rear end – which also helps on the top speed front.

It’s not just speed where Tsunoda is losing out

“In terms of confidence, I’m happy, considering I’ve only done a few races and it’s going to grow,” Tsunoda said.

“For now I’m trying to understand how this car works, how to put it in the window it wants, from the point of view of tyre warm-up and set-up. I don’t think I understand even half of it yet. These things are the key I’m trying to work on to understand as soon as possible.”

It is no coincidence that, when speaking of being able to put the performance together at critical moments, Tsunoda spoke of a lack of consistency. Often, the RB21 has also proved to be a fairly unpredictable car to drive, so it is difficult to find the necessary consistency on the limit. But this is not the only reason.

What is equally vital is tyre preparation and management, especially in an era when tyres are so sensitive in terms of temperature. This is an aspect that further clashes with the RB21’s small operating window, which only Verstappen has been able to master.

“Max senses more things in the car than I do, like for example the tyre temperature when you leave the garage. When the temperatures drop from Q1 to Q3, Max adapts,” Tsunoda said. “When the temperature drops, he can adapt the warm-up lap, he knows how to warm up the tyres in each corner, maybe increase the pace or things like that.

“I didn’t feel this. I couldn’t feel what I felt with the Racing Bulls. I still can’t feel it with this car, maybe simply because I’m not driving completely relaxed.”

There is also a new relationship to build

“I think those details are really important with these regulations, which make the tyres very sensitive – and a tenth, or even a few milliseconds in each corner, make a big difference,” Tsunoda explained. “Details that are built not only with greater confidence in the car, but also in the relationship with their engineer, in fact one of the strengths of the Verstappen-Lambiase pairing.”

Going back a few weeks, in Bahrain Tsunoda had detailed how he was searching for the feeling with his new track engineer at Red Bull, which takes time to blossom.

“It’s part of the learning process. We have to make everything much smoother operationally: the warm-up of the tyres, the switches [on the steering wheel], all these things. It’s been pretty chaotic in general. Maybe Woody [Richard Wood, track engineer] and I need to go out tonight and strengthen our relationship a little bit,” joked the Japanese driver in Sakhir.

In fact, Tsunoda had also changed race engineer at Racing Bulls in 2024, when Ernesto Desiderio took over from Mattia Spini, with the latter promoted to another role. However, Desiderio had already been with the team for some time and had understood how to communicate effectively with Tsunoda, which aided the transition.

In order to speed up Tsunoda’s acclimatisation at Red Bull, the team organised both an intensive simulator session and on-track training with an RB19: an opportunity to build up mileage away from the pressures of a race weekend.