With Sergio Perez stepping down from Red Bull Racing ahead of the 2025 season, his choice of replacement came down to the Racing Bulls duo of Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda. And, despite his experience, Tsunoda was not selected.

Plenty of theories have emerged as to why Tsunoda didn’t make the cut, with the most recent coming courtesy of Ted Kravitz.

The twofold Yuki Tsunoda problem

With 2024 being Yuki Tsunoda’s fourth year with the Red Bull junior team, he seemed to be the obvious choice for promotion when Sergio Perez announced that he would be stepping back from full-time competition ahead of 2025.

Yet when Red Bull clarified its driver lineup, Liam Lawson was the man they chose.

Though Lawson has had an impressive career through the junior categories, he’s still only 22 years old, with just 11 Grands Prix starts under his belt. While drivers with less experience have done more, many fans were shocked that Tsunoda would be overlooked so easily.

But speaking on the Sky F1 podcast, pundit Ted Kravitz has hypothesized on two reasons as to why Red Bull would have opted against Tsunoda.

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Kravtiz started off by acknowledging that, at the end of the day, all Red Bull driver decisions come down to two people: Christian Horner and Helmut Marko. He also noted that he couldn’t speak clearly for their exact reasoning.

However, he had a hypothesis.

“I think it’s temperament and keeping it together against the pressure cooker that is being Max Verstappen’s teammate,” Kravitz said.

“They don’t think that [Tsunoda] is able to cope with that pressure.”

But the argument of temperament is an interesting one. Max Verstappen himself is known for making rash moves when angry, and Lawson, too, showed in 2024 that he was prone to flipping the bird to drivers that displeased him — even if that driver was a veteran like Sergio Perez.

Tsunoda has had moments of clouded judgement just like the others; however, only his temperament has been questioned.

Kravitz, for his own part, feels that Tsunoda “should” be able to cope with that pressure because “he’s destroyed every teammate he’s had.”

“I think he’s mature enough to do it,” Kravitz summed up, “but Horner and Marko don’t.”

Tsunoda will remain at Racing Bulls in 2025, where he’ll be joined by rookie Isack Hadjar. However, rumors about Tsunoda’s inevitable departure have already abounded, with Christian Horner suggesting that, after five years, it’s time for a driver in a support team to either be let go, or to find other options.

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