
David Coulthard believes Red Bull had one pressing question when deciding Max Verstappen’s team-mate for the F1 2025 season, is he a ‘Max beater’?
That led to them choosing Liam Lawson over Yuki Tsunoda with the latter facing a fifth season with Racing Bulls with Coulthard claiming he didn’t have any “better” options.
‘Do they think he’s a Max beater?’
Having parted ways with Sergio Perez in the wake of a disappointing 2024 championship for the Mexican driver in which he scored just 152 points to Verstappen’s title-winning 437 points, Red Bull confirmed Lawson as his replacement.
It was a huge blow for Tsunoda who will remain a junior driver, spending a fifth year with Red Bull’s B-team Racing Bulls.
Tsunoda believes it was an “image” problem that cost him with the driver criticised by Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko for his swearing rants that the 81-year-old labelled unproductive.
“I think that part of it is kind of my fault because I wasn’t really able to perform straight away in the first year,” Tsunoda told Motorsport.com after the Lawson announcement. “It creates a bit of an image of who I am.
“[In 2024], even though I was performing well, I feel like didn’t I get really get credit as much as probably other drivers get, but it is what it is. I just naturally, just keep what I’m doing and performing well and just prove them wrong.”
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However, if you ask former Red Bull driver David Coulthard, it comes down to one question: Who can beat Max Verstappen?
“Yuki [was] understandably disappointed that having had a very strong season, he wasn’t given the chance at Red Bull Racing,” the Scot told the Formula For Success podcast.
“But I guess ultimately for Red Bull, they asked the question, do they think he’s a future World Champion? Do they think he’s a Max beater?
“And again, as always, this isn’t opinions, this is facts. They’ve got all the data on him.”
It means a fifth season at Red Bull’s junior team for the Honda-backed Tsunoda with Coulthard claiming if he had “better options”, he would’ve moved on
“On [the] one hand,” Coulthard continued, “you could say if Yuki had better options outside of what is now the renamed Racing Bulls team, then he would have taken it.
“So, I think at the end, this is a big opportunity for all these guys and it’s going to be very interesting to see how they perform when they’re out on track.”
Although on the face of it, the data available to Red Bull when deciding Verstappen’s team-mate for the F1 2025 season was Tsunoda’s seven points and Lawson’s four during their six races as team-mates last season, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner explained that team believes Lawson with just 11 races to his name has more room for growth than Tsunoda.
And that was one of the key reasons for signing the New Zealander.
“It was very, very tight between the two of them,” the team principal told ESPN. “I mean, Yuki is a very fast driver. He’s got three or four seasons of experience now. He did a very good job in the tire test for us in Abu Dhabi where the engineers were impressed with how he performed.
“With Liam, when you look and go into the analytics of his race, pace was slightly better in the races that he did. His qualifying pace was very tight with Yuki, and you’ve got to assume that the potential with Liam having only done 11 grand prix, is he’s only going to get better and stronger. He’s shown real mental resilience and toughness.
“A couple of things have stood out with me with Liam – how versatile he is. You put him into a situation, he gets on with it. If you remember his debut in Zandvoort after Daniel broke his fingers, he was racing against Max on his out lap.
“He’s got that kind of gritty racer mentality. He did a year in the DTM where he adjusted to driving a Ferrari GT car incredibly quickly alongside Alex Albon and generally had the upper hand.
“And again, his racecraft has been really one of his key strengths. So he’s not afraid to go wheel-to-wheel and even rub wheels where necessary. So I think he’s going to do a great job for us.”
Lawson will contest his first Grand Prix as a Red Bull on 16 March in Australia, the closest the Kiwi will get to a home race.
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