Christian Horner addresses Helmut Marko’s Adrian Newey claim about Yuki Tsunoda

Christian Horner has cleared up suggestions that Adrian Newey played a role in Yuki Tsunoda missing out on the Red Bull seat for the start of the 2025 F1 season.

Tsunoda is set to make his Red Bull debut on Sunday at the Japanese Grand Prix.

The 24-year-old was promoted to Red Bull following Liam Lawson’s torrid two races with the team, forcing Horner to make a brutal change so early in the season.

Even though Tsunoda has been the second-best performing Red Bull driver, behind Verstappen, since the start of 2023, he’s been consistently overlooked.

Daniel Ricciardo was set to replace Sergio Perez ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix in 2024 before Red Bull decided against it.

Lawson got the call-up over Tsunoda at the end of 2024 despite failing to out-qualify him.

One reason for that, according to Helmut Marko, is Newey.

Newey, now at Aston Martin, was angered by an incident at the 2022 British Grand Prix that cost Verstappen the victory.

Verstappen ran over some debris from Tsunoda’s AlphaTauri.

In an interview with Kleine Zeitung, Marko said: “For a long time, Yuki had the image of not performing consistently and making silly mistakes here and there. That’s what happened last year in Mexico, where the decisive phase for us began.

“With Lawson, it was the exact opposite at first: he came on and delivered straight away, no matter how great the pressure was. In retrospect, however, it wasn’t the right decision.

“In general, however, a lot can be traced back to a single incident. At Silverstone, Tsunoda once drove into Pierre Gasly’s car, and parts of the cars on the track damaged the underbody of Verstappen’s car, which cost him the race. Adrian Newey was furious at the time.

“From that point on, Yuki was a red rag to him. But now Newey is gone, and Yuki has worked hard on himself.”

Adrian Newey had “no input”

Newey stepped away from Red Bull after the Miami Grand Prix.

The F1 design guru decided to take a break from F1 before taking up a fresh challenge.

Newey is spearheading Aston Martin’s F1 project, starting work in early March.

Speaking to Sky Sports after FP1 at Suzuka, Horner was asked about Marko’s claim.

“Adrian wasn’t involved in drivers certainly for this year,” Horner replied.

“I think from the comments I saw that Helmut was referring to an incident back in 2022 at Silverstone. Adrian had no input into our driver selection for this year.”