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Despite returning to the slower Racing Bulls car, Liam Lawson outqualified his Red Bull replacement Yuki Tsunoda in Japan. But there are signs Red Bull’s merciless switch may actually be working already.

Leaving aside the ruthlessness of Red Bull’s decision to demote Lawson after two difficult races on circuits he didn’t know, what ultimately mattered to the team is having someone in the second car who could be a regular scorer of big points to boost its constructors’ hopes, and ideally as soon as possible.

If you take Saturday’s qualifying session in isolation – in which Tsunoda placed 15th in Q2 behind both Racing Bulls, including the driver he replaced – you would have to say the jury is still out on the Japanese driver. Tsunoda had a poor start to his final lap, drifting out of the final chicane with the unstable Red Bull, which left him starting his flyer on the back foot, and then getting out of shape in Turn 1. Afterwards he said not nailing the warm-up of the tyres cost him dearly.

“In Q1 I felt pretty good. I just missed the window, I guess. I think the window that this car can operate [in] is very narrow. Most of the things have to almost be perfect, especially warm-up,” Tsunoda explained. “And especially in Q2 run two, I wasn’t able to do the warm-up I wanted as the previous run, so that makes a big difference in the end. I kind of recognised it but it was a bit too late, and I wasn’t able to put it all together when it mattered.”

Tsunoda said it was ‘a big shame’ not getting into Q3, which had been his baseline pre-weekend target. But what he shouldn’t feel any shame about is how he has acquitted himself across the weekend.

Having been dropped into the car with no prior mileage in front of his home fans and Honda’s watchful eye – on one of F1’s most difficult circuits – the pressure on Tsunoda was immense. But if he was feeling any of it, he didn’t show it throughout the weekend. He ran team-mate Verstappen close in first free practice – with the usual caveat of unknown engine modes – and like others was derailed by FP2’s four red flags, which limited his running.

Having felt no weird behaviour from the RB21 in the Milton Keynes simulator last week, the on-the-knife-edge behaviour of Red Bull’s 2025 machine did dawn on him once he was afforded first-hand experience. But while Lawson felt he needed much more time to adjust, which he cruelly wasn’t afforded, Tsunoda seemed to cope relatively well already, setting the ninth-fastest time in FP3 and seventh in Q1 before his messier Q2 performance.

Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls

Photo by: Clive Mason/Getty Images

The Red Bull not only has a narrower set-up window than the Racing Bulls lineage of cars the 24-year-old is accustomed to, but its on-the-nose behaviour also means it is much more unstable, something Verstappen has also complained about in spite of his stunning, heart-in-mouth pole position.

“This car is on the edge with the rear but at least for now, I feel pretty okay with the stability,” Tsunoda said. “I would say in terms of the rear sliding, I’m feeling it, but at the same time this kind of direction is the set-up that I have to drive to perform well in the car. I started recognising it throughout the three practices, it just wasn’t enough in the end to put it all together.”

Team principal Christian Horner, who had long been reluctant to promote Tsunoda, also sounded more impressed than he had previously been. “It was a great shame for Yuki today because actually his Q1 was very competitive, he was within a tenth,” Horner told F1 TV. “It was building nicely [but] in Q2 he actually didn’t go quicker than Q1 and he had a big moment at the start of his lap.

“By the time you’ve given away three, four tenths, you’re never going to get that back around here, so it was a shame because the qualifying doesn’t represent the job that he’s done up until this point.

He then expanded to Sky: “I think he would have comfortably made the top 10 today. Up to that point I think he’s actually done very well, and I was pleased to see Liam settling in well as well at Racing Bulls.”

Lawson was also disappointed, claiming 14th on the grid while team-mate Isack Hadjar took a superb seventh. But he too showed much more promise in his first competitive outing in the Racing Bulls than the Q2 result showed, and most certainly he felt much more at ease than on his two disastrous weekends with Red Bull.

“It’s been a tricky day. I felt really good, even stronger than yesterday in terms of comfort in the car,” he said. “It was alright in Q1 and then through Q2 the balance sort of got away from us and I just couldn’t get much more out of it.”

Yuki Tsunoda, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Mark Thompson – Getty Images

Poetically, Lawson and Tsunoda will encounter each other on the grid tomorrow, starting from 14th and 15th respectively. But Lawson shrugged off any extra significance to having ‘his’ Red Bull starting behind him with Tsunoda at the wheel: “No, it’s just another car. I mean, with tomorrow’s weather it’s going to be an exciting enough race probably, so I’ll just be focused on trying to get a good start and moving forward.”

In the past Tsunoda repeatedly wondered why he hadn’t been promoted to Red Bull yet. And while he has belatedly been handed his dream move in difficult circumstances, he has now also woken up to the harsh reality of just how hard the Red Bull is to drive and set up, and perhaps how easy Verstappen has made it look despite the Dutchman’s own gripes. 

But from day one – and it admittedly is a very small sample size – it doesn’t seem like Tsunoda is wrestling with the Red Bull’s typical weaknesses to the same extent that Lawson or other drivers in that seat have.

“The positive thing is I started to understand the car,” he concluded after setting aside his initial disappointment. “It’s quite difficult to operate this car properly, it’s quite narrow but at least I feel confidence in the car, and I know what to do for the future. I finished Q2 [having finally read] the whole textbook about the Red Bull, you know what I mean?”

Make no mistake, Tsunoda still has his work cut out to make his dream move work and really make the seat his own. But if you look past Q2 alone, his baseline pace has already been stronger than his predecessor, and so has his confidence in the car.