Yuki Tsunoda is now four rounds into his Red Bull career, yet the Japanese ace is also realising the full size of the challenge he has to be teammates with Max Verstappen.
So much so, in fact, that Christian Danner even thinks Tsunoda is proving to be ‘worse’ with Red Bull than Sergio Perez was last year. The Milton Keynes team parted ways with Perez at the end of a hugely disappointing 2024 season, but did not find the answer in Liam Lawson.
Red Bull initially snubbed Tsunoda to promote Lawson from their junior team Racing Bulls in December after deciding to terminate Perez’s contract. The Mexican’s woe last season cost Red Bull the F1 teams’ championship to McLaren after only securing 152 of their 589 points.
Perez also finished the 2024 F1 season just eighth in the drivers’ standings after only scoring 34.8% of the 437 points Verstappen scored to lift a fourth consecutive title. Yet Lawson did not adapt to Red Bull’s tricky car, so they demoted the Kiwi after only two point-less rounds.
Yuki Tsunoda is ‘worse than Sergio Perez’ with his single-lap pace deficit to Max Verstappen at Red Bull
Tsunoda took just two rounds to get his first points as a Red Bull racer with P9 in the Bahrain Grand Prix, where he also reached Q3 for the first time. But Danner thinks the 24-year-old is already proving to be ‘worse’ than Perez was, given his single-lap pace deficit to Verstappen.
READ MORE: Sergio Perez’s Red Bull record against Max Verstappen’s prior teammates’
| CATEGORY | PEREZ (2024) | LAWSON (2025) | TSUNODA (2025) |
| Average Grand Prix qualifying pace deficit to Verstappen | 0.770s | 0.913s | 0.756s |
| Average Grand Prix qualifying position deficit to Verstappen | 6.3 | 15.5 | 8.25 |
| Average Grand Prix time distance deficit to Verstappen | 43.3s | 81.147s | 47.833s |
| Average Grand Prix position deficit to Verstappen | 4.8 | 10.5 | 9.25 |
While Tsunoda is performing stronger than Lawson registered at Red Bull, his record against Verstappen is worse than what Perez achieved last year. His single-lap pace in qualifying has particularly concerned Danner, having only penned the 15th, 10th, ninth and 10th best laps.
Danner has told sport.de: “If you look at the pure time differences, Tsunoda is indeed worse than Sergio Perez last year. He’s almost a second slower than Verstappen.”
Qualifying was one of the areas where Perez struggled the most amid what proved to be his final year at Red Bull in 2024, as well. In the Mexican’s fourth season beside Verstappen, the 35-year-old out-qualified the 27-year-old once over 24 rounds with P4 and P6 in Azerbaijan.
Liam Lawson is going ‘in the wrong direction’ since Red Bull demotion to Racing Bulls
Danner also does not think the driver Tsunoda replaced at Red Bull has fared well since their switch, with Lawson going ‘in the wrong direction’ for Racing Bulls. The 23-year-old is one of four drivers yet to score a point this season and has retired in two of the first six Grands Prix.
READ MORE: Red Bull driver Yuki Tsunoda’s life outside F1 from height to parents
His latest blow also came into the first corner of the first lap of last week’s Miami Grand Prix. Lawson crashed with Jack Doohan at the start of the Miami GP, which even proved to be the latter’s final outing. Alpine have demoted Doohan and promoted Franco Colapinto for Imola.
Danner added: “[Isack] Hadjar clearly has more speed, [but] we’ll have to wait and see how Lawson develops. But he’s tending to go in the wrong direction [because of] a mixture of overly hard driving and tenseness.”
