Why Lawson got Red Bull seat over unlucky Tsunoda

Surely Yuki Tsunoda believed this would be his time for the highly coveted promotion.

- KIERAN JACKSON

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 yesterday 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.