Racing Bulls boss names crucial new Yuki Tsunoda attributes

Yuki Tsunoda has not become just more mature in the last 12 months but has improved as a driver in every area, according to Racing Bulls team principal Laurent Mekies.

Tsunoda finally received a call to join Red Bull ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix, having spent just over four seasons plying his trade at AlphaTauri/Racing Bulls.

While the promotion to Red Bull’s primary squad was triggered by Liam Lawson’s disastrous start to the season in the RB21, the energy drinks giant also insisted that it was really impressed by Tsunoda’s progress and wanted to give him a shot in a front-running team.

Much has been made about the maturity the Japanese youngster has shown in recent years, having appeared as a hot-headed driver with a tendency to blurt out over team radio when he first moved into F1 in 2021.

But Mekies, who has presided over the team previously known as RB since 2024, believes Tsunoda’s growth goes far beyond just psychological development.

“We often think that drivers only grow precisely from a maturity standpoint — in the calmness and in the analysis — but I think in Yuki’s case, we have seen him making steps 360 degrees.

“We have seen him being more calm, being more mature, improving massively his technical feedback. Really quite an incredible step across the last 12 months, and this is converting to speed. As a result, the natural speed when he gets into the car is higher straight away.

“When you combine all that, well, you turn a young driver into a team leader, and that’s really the role he was taking into the team, certainly from the start of the season. So I think it was a very impressive example of improvement at 360°, and as we know, it never comes for free or with no effort. You can sense how much effort and concentration he's been putting into that.”
 
Mekies explained that Tsunoda is now able to execute clean weekends, having previously developed a bad reputation for crashing too often.

He also feels the 24-year-old is now able to extract the maximum out of the car while operating under pressure, hailing his performances in Australia and China with Racing Bulls prior to his move to the senior squad.

“He’s able to turn up to a race weekend and, from the first lap of FP1 to the last lap of the race, do just a purely faultless weekend,” said the Frenchman.

“Of course, we are not fast enough for that to be visible to most of you guys, but we have seen him executing weekends, or qualifications, or races under serious pressure.

“Take Melbourne – he put the car in P5 there on the dry, I think it’s his best qualifying ever. Take the Sprint Race in China – he finished P6 with huge pressure from faster cars behind him, didn’t put a foot wrong. So what you see outside of the car is certainly turning up into very tangible improvements when he’s driving the car.”