Helmut Marko has been pleased with Yuki Tsunoda’s performances so far at Red Bull after the Japanese driver replaced Liam Lawson.

After many thought Tsunoda would never get a shot in the Red Bull seat, he was given just that after just two races of the season with Lawson demoted down to Racing Bulls.

Yuki Tsunoda makes ‘huge step forward’ according to Helmut Marko

Despite minimal lead-in time, Tsunoda has acquitted himself fairly well to life in the top team – finishing 12th and 9th in his first two races before a lap one crash with Pierre Gasly last time out.

Even with the minimal points score, Marko suggested he was pleased with what he had seen from Tsunoda so far.

“His speed is right, as is his approach,” Marko told Speedweek. “When things get serious in qualifying, he loses time to Max, but the normal margin is two or three tenths. Tsunoda goes his own way.

“A crash like the one with Gasly on the first lap of the Saudi Arabia GP, that can happen, from our calculations he could have finished sixth. And that’s a huge step forward, because before him, our second car rarely came close to the top ten.”

However, Marko’s praise for Tsunoda paled in comparison to the Austrian’s comments on Isack Hadjar with Marko saying the rookie was “the revelation of this first phase of the World Championship.”

“The young Parisian didn’t know most of the circuits, but was always fast right from the start and made few mistakes, apart from the mistake in Australia.

“Isack achieves in the races what many Formula 1 rookies struggle with – he consistently posts good lap times while managing his tyres very well. He delivers all of this relatively calmly.”

As for Red Bull in general, Marko said they expect McLaren to pull away in the upcoming race in Miami.

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“We’re talking about a completely different track again, but above all, higher temperatures are to be expected. On paper, that’s not an advantage for us. In Jeddah, we were eight-tenths behind McLaren in the third practice session, in significantly warmer conditions than later in qualifying.

“We and our other opponents expected McLaren to pull away from everyone. But that didn’t happen. In Miami, however, we expect the conditions to be more favourable to McLaren.

“Our task at the moment is to develop a broader working window for our racing car and also to work on reducing certain weaknesses of the car before the European races and thus improving the car’s basic speed.”

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