Did Tsunoda ‘destroy’ his team mates

Yuki Tsunoda has missed his best chance to join Red Bull’s Formula 1 team, after they announced his team mate Liam Lawson will race for them in 2025.

Red Bull handed Lawson his chance to drive for their top team after just 11 starts with their junior squad. They picked him over Tsunoda, who has driven for RB (previously known as AlphaTauri) since 2021.

Tsunoda undoubtedly feels hard done by that Red Bull have overlooked him. Before the end of the season, as it became clear Red Bull would replace Sergio Perez in 2025, Tsunoda made the pointed claim that he had “destroyed” his team mates while at RB.

Does Tsunoda’s claim stack up – and does Red Bull’s decision to promote Lawson instead of him make sense?

Tsunoda vs Gasly

Tsunoda made his F1 debut in 2021 following a rapid promotion through the junior categories including a single year each in Formula 3 and Formula 2. His first team mate was Pierre Gasly who had already started 64 F1 races, all bar two for Red Bull’s second team, known at the time as AlphaTauri (now RB).

Points on his debut in Bahrain set expectations high, but Tsunoda largely failed to live up to them in his first season. Team principal Franz Tost grew concerned following a series of collisions, but Tsunoda earned a second season at the team.

In his second season Tsunoda showed a lot more polish and potential. He ran Gasly closer in qualifying and took a larger share of the team’s points. The more experienced driver still comfortably out-scored him by almost two to one, but the improvement Tsunoda had made was obvious.

Tsunoda vs de Vries

If Red Bull had their way, Tsunoda’s 2023 team mate would have been Colton Herta, but he lacked the necessary FIA superlicence points and the FIA wouldn’t budge. They therefore appointed Nyck de Vries: A champion in Formula 2 and Formula E who was overlooked by Formula 1 teams until his impressive debut as a substitute for Alexander Albon at Monza in 2022.

However with Daniel Ricciardo returning to Red Bull as a reserve, the senior team quickly decided they wanted to get a measure of his abilities, and De Vries was shunted aside after just 10 races. He had not shown up brilliantly against Tsunoda during that time, but nor were his statistics disastrous for a rookie with so few starts.

Would Tsunoda have avoided the same fate 10 races into his F1 career if Red Bull had decided they wanted his seat for someone else? Unlikely.

Tsunoda vs Ricciardo

Tsunoda and the returning Ricciardo could each look upon the other as their ticket to the top team: If either beat the other comprehensively it would make a strong case for their promotion. But the final result wasn’t conclusive enough for either driver, and the picture was further complicated by Ricciardo’s enforced absence due to injury in the second half of 2023.

It wasn’t a rout, and Ricciardo arguably delivered the most impressive performances of either driver during this spell, in the 2023 Mexican Grand Prix and 2024 Miami sprint race. Perhaps those peaks gave Red Bull the impression there was more potential in the car than either driver was regularly tapping.

But Tsunoda indisputably held the upper hand by the time Red Bull finally lost patience with Ricciardo and showed him the door following the Singapore Grand Prix. This made the strongest case for Tsunoda to be considered as a Red Bull driver, and soon afterwards came word he would finally get to test for the team following the conclusion of the 2024 championship.

Tsunoda vs Lawson

Liam Lawson’s arrival as a substitute for the injured Ricciardo at the 2023 Dutch Grand Prix was not the first time he and Tsunoda shared a team. They paired up at Motopark in Euroformula Open in 2019 and showed a worrying tendency to collide with each other.

Tsunoda is ahead of Lawson on the raw numbers, but with 76 more grands prix under his belt than his team mate, he would want the score line to be clearer. Lawson almost matched him in race results, and though the qualifying score-line is quite one-sided, there was often very little in it this year. Lawson qualified mere hundredths off Tsunoda in Mexico, Losail and Yas Marina.

That goes some way towards explaining why, though some aspects of Lawson’s performances against Tsunoda’s were not massively better than De Vries’s, Red Bull consider him a better prospect. His points-scoring, aided by a superb 10-place climb through the field in Austin, has also no doubt made an impact. In contrast, Tsunoda lost more places during grands prix this year on average than any other driver.

Then there are the intangible factors which don’t show up on graphs. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said they were impressed by Lawson’s combative style when racing other drivers. Tsunoda’s tendency to shoot from the hip on his radio has not inspired confidence.

But opportunities like these are also a matter of timing. Tsunoda’s arrival in F1 coincided with a period when Red Bull were satisfied with Perez’s performance. Had Red Bull needed a driver halfway through 2021 – when Verstappen was locked in a title battle with Lewis Hamilton – would they have risked promoting Tsunoda?

Tsunoda vs Gasly – first 11 grands prix

To put Tsunoda’s current form into perspective with his performances against Lawson, here’s how he did in his first 11 races against Gasly in 2021. The pair enjoyed a much more competitive car, hence the higher points scores for both, but Tsunoda over his first 11 races arguably didn’t impress quite as well against his team mate as Lawson has done.

| Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

2024 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

Browse all 2024 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix articles