Red Bull admit Yuki Tsunoda 'certainly faster' than Liam Lawson despite F1 promotion snub
Red Bull admit Yuki Tsunoda 'certainly faster' than Liam Lawson despite F1 promotion snub
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Helmut Marko has admitted Yuki Tsunoda was overlooked for promotion to the main Red Bull team despite being "certainly faster" than Liam Lawson. The latter is the one who got the nod after Red Bull decided they needed a replacement for the struggling Sergio Perez. Lawson will race alongside Max Verstappen at the main squad in 2025, while Isack Hadjar has been promoted from Formula 2 to partner Tsunoda.
Lawson has just 11 Formula 1 race starts to his name while Tsunoda boasts 87 and four years of experience in the sport. But neither that, nor the fact the latter has shown more pace, were enough to convince Marko and Christian Horner that he was the right choice.
The Austrian adviser, 81, has explained why Tsunoda was overlooked despite being the obvious candidate for promotion. He said: "Yuki is certainly the faster of the two in terms of speed, at the moment. "But he doesn't have the necessary consistency and keeps making mistakes. Then there are his outbursts of anger, which have improved significantly, but they remain a factor. Then he loses control.
"We believe that it would lead to great difficulties emotionally if Tsunoda realised, next to Max, that he couldn't beat him. He possibly couldn't even get close and what if things weren't going as he had imagined?". Lawson's promotion has placed Tsunoda's long-term future in the Red Bull set-up in doubt. He came to be part of the academy through engine partners Honda but, from 2026, Red Bull will be running their own power units and the Japanese company will have begun their new partnership with Aston Martin.
