Surely Yuki Tsunoda believed this would be his time for the highly coveted promotion. Four years behind him at Red Bull’s sister team, with a record 12 Q3 progressions in 2024, the popular Japanese driver believes he is entering his primetime years at 24. This season, he outperformed his teammate 18-6 in qualifying and 14-6 in races over 24 rounds. If not now, when?
But still, it wasn’t enough.
Nothing was surprising about Red Bull’s announcement on Thursday morning that Liam Lawson – Tsunoda’s RB teammate for the final six races of 2024 – would replace Sergio Perez at Red Bull in 2025. It had been mooted for weeks that Christian Horner’s preference was the New Zealander when talk of luring Franco Colapinto from Williams cooled and the call inevitably came that Perez had run his final race as Max Verstappen’s teammate.
The most obvious signing, Carlos Sainz, was dismissed as an option many months ago.
On the face of it, the decision seems peculiar at best. Baffling at worst. Here’s Tsunoda, heading into his fifth F1 season, with 87 grand prix starts and 91 points behind him and having just recorded the most top-10 finishes in a single season of his career.
But Horner has plumped for Lawson, with just 11 grand prix starts – spread over two seasons – in his back pocket. Now, he faces the most daunting task in F1 as four-time world champion Verstappen’s teammate.
“It was very, very tight between the two of them," Horner said, of his choice between the RB pairing.
“I mean, Yuki is a very fast driver. He’s got three or four seasons of experience now. He did a very good job in the tyre test for us in Abu Dhabi where the engineers were impressed with how he performed.”
In hindsight, last week’s post-season test in the RB20 for Tsunoda was almost a tad cruel. By this stage, Horner’s mind was made up and giving the 24-year-old a shot in Verstappen’s cockpit merely gave him a glimpse of a future that was not in realistic foresight.
Tsunoda will stay at Racing Bulls for 2025, with Red Bull junior and Formula 2 runner-up Isack Hadjar set to join him.
Horner explained his reasoning in more detail: “With Liam, when you look and go into the analytics of his race, pace was slightly better in the races that he did.
“His qualifying pace was very tight with Yuki, and you’ve got to assume that the potential with Liam having only done 11 grand prix, is he’s only going to get better and stronger. He’s shown real mental resilience and toughness.”
It is a meteoric rise for Lawson, who a mere three months ago was still without a seat on the grid. In replacing Daniel Ricciardo – first due to injury in 2023 for five races, second in permanent fashion in 2024 for the final six races – Lawson has capitalised on precious time out on track to set his stall out.
And, there is no doubt about it, he has impressed.
People first sat up and took note last year in Singapore, where he navigated the most humid race of the season to record his first top-10 finish in ninth. He replicated the same result when he returned to the cockpit in Austin in October, before wagging his middle finger at Perez during a contentious moment in Mexico a week later. The Kiwi has fire in his belly.
“A couple of things have stood out with me with Liam, how versatile he is,” Horner added. “You put him into a situation, he gets on with it. If you remember his debut in Zandvoort after Daniel broke his fingers, he was racing against Max on his out lap.
“His racecraft has been really one of his key strengths. So he’s not afraid to go wheel-to-wheel and even rub wheels where necessary, so I think he’s going to do a great job for us.”
For Lawson himself, he described the call-up as a “lifelong dream”. But Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon will tell you that a Red Bull dream can quickly turn into a disaster. Their skillset was not in doubt. But their experience was lacking.
Both failed to stamp their mark, amid Red Bull’s old-school impatience and were dropped in double quick time. Lawson, at 22 years of age, has been thrust right into the lion’s den, competing against an all-time great in Verstappen, who is right at the top of his game.
A massive opportunity? Absolutely. But the New Zealander will have to hit the ground running at the first race in Australia next March to avoid going a similar way. And if he does, perhaps Tsunoda’s time will finally arrive.
