Overlooked Yuki Tsunoda feels he deserves Red Bull F1 chance

RB’s Yuki Tsunoda believes he deserves a chance to earn an F1 drive with Red Bull in the future.

Despite turning in impressive and consistent performances for RB, Tsunoda has seemingly been continually overlooked by the senior Red Bull team.

The now-axed Daniel Ricciardo was initially brought in at RB as a backup option for the out-of-form Sergio Perez, while Ricciardo’s replacement Liam Lawson appears to have now leapfrogged Tsunoda in the queue for a potential future Red Bull seat.

Asked if he feels he deserves to be racing for Red Bull already, Tsunoda, who is signed to race for RB again in 2025, is quoted as saying by F1.com: “I don’t know about previous years, but this year, yeah.”

The 24-year-old Japanese racer has contributed 22 points to RB’s 34-point haul this season as the Faenza outfit looks to cling onto sixth place in the constructors’ championship.

Tsunoda insists the continued speculation surrounding a future Red Bull seat has “zero” impact on his approach to the remaining six events.

“I would say those things I’ve kind of got used to,” he said. “It’s been floating around throughout the year so far, so there’s no point in talking about it to be honest. For me, I’ve just got to do whatever I have to, to focus and improve myself.

“This environment is all about performance and I just have to focus on what I have to improve. My main focus now is to score points for the team and have a successful year.

“For me, I’m very motivated to achieve P6 in the [constructors’] championship. We never actually achieved that as a team in history, so that would be a cool result.”

When pressed on whether he thinks the Red Bull door is open for him in 2025, Tsunoda replied: “I don’t know. I assume so, but it depends for sure on performance.

“Like we saw in our team, it’s performance-related all the time and, if I perform well, hopefully those guys will see it. You never know, I never know, I can’t control those things anyway.”

On having a new teammate in the shape of Lawson from this weekend’s United States Grand Prix, Tsunoda said: “It’s not my first time with team mates being changed, so it’s not a completely new environment or something that makes me feel extra pressure. Pressure is always there, so I’ll do what I was doing previously.

“I like driving, I’m enjoying racing, I’m keeping focused, trying to make our car better with the engineers, as a whole team, working together. I like that kind of environment and I’m just enjoying that moment.”