The second Red Bull Racing seat has been something of a death sentence for every driver who’s partnered up with Max Verstappen, but that might be changing.

Though Yuki Tsunoda didn’t exactly blow the F1 world out of the water by securing a 10th-place position on the starting grid, he was happy with his performance — and offered a surprising revelation about his teammate.

Yuki Tsunoda offers promising Red Bull progress update

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

The Bahrain Grand Prix will only be Yuki Tsunoda’s second race with the Red Bull Racing team, but he’s already shown strong pace when compared to Liam Lawson.

The RB21 has been a seriously challenging car to drive, with Max Verstappen citing brake issues in addition to an overall lack of balance and a consistent issue with tyre degradation.

In Bahrain, the tyre deg promises to be a significant problem in addition to the ongoing RB21 concerns, and that was easily in evidence in Verstappen’s P7 qualifying position.

Just three positions behind him, in 10th, was Yuki Tsunoda — and all things considered, the Japanese driver was delighted with how he performed.

“Q3 was my target,” Tsunoda told media, including PlanetF1.com, “and considering what I had in free practices, it’s a good recovery.

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Tsunoda then went on to explain how he’s reacted to the car, saying, “It’s just really difficult to be in the narrow window that this car operates, and just trying lots of things, and also naturally you have up and down performance.

“So I’m not really stressing much with that, but it’s always tight, and if you go above a little bit, it just like a cliff, y’know — it just doesn’t work at all.

“I’m just happy with the progress so far. I just keep what I’m doing, but I’m happy with the confidence level of this car, but just the knowledge, the understanding of this car — not yet.”

It’s a candid admission from a driver, but Tsunoda’s lack of RB21 knowledge hasn’t exactly slowed him down.

He was then asked if he’s been trying to emulate his teammate Max Verstappen, either in terms of driving style or in terms of setup.

Tsunoda was emphatic when he said, “No. Setup-wise, I think we are close naturally somehow, so that’s really good.

“In terms of confidence level in the car, for myself, I just need a bit more time to build up throughout the week, so that creates big downsides to try different sort of stuff.

“I think how we drive is not far away. The balance, normally what I ask is actually kind of similar.

“But in the warm-up, and you know, to operate the car in a good window, there’s lot of stuff other than set-up, and that’s what I’m struggling at so far.

“Probably I’m not understanding about this car even half the things. So I just keep what I’m doing. Keep this kind of rhythm for the understanding, and yeah, progress in the future.”

After so many dejected post-qualifying interviews with Red Bull drivers, Tsunoda sounds reasonably confident; he appears to understand where he’s lacking in pace, and where he can improve — but critically, it seems as if he feels those improvements are possible.

Yuki Tsunoda will line up for the Bahrain Grand Prix in 10th, the best start for the second Red Bull car so far in 2025.

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