Despite achieving notable firsts for the second RB21, Helmut Marko says Yuki Tsunoda has not kicked on like the team expected he would.

Tsunoda replaced Liam Lawson after just two race weekends in the F1 2025 season, as the New Zealander buckled under the pressure with three Q1 exits.

Yuki Tsunoda has the speed but…

Tsunoda made his long-awaited Red Bull debut at the Japanese Grand Prix, breaking into Q2 before qualifying tenth in Bahrain and going on to score the second RB21’s first points of the campaign with a P9 result.

He’s added five points since, but in the last four qualifying sessions, he hasn’t managed to break into Q3 with P20s in Imola, where he crashed, and again Spain, where he just didn’t have the pace.

It’s meant Verstappen has all but flown the Red Bull flag by himself, scoring 155 of the team’s 162 points.

With the second car only scoring a trickle of points, Red Bull have fallen to fourth in the Constructors’ Championship where they’re over 200 points down on the two-car McLaren team.

Red Bull team-mates: F1 2025 head-to-head stats

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

Marko concedes Tsunoda hasn’t kicked on as Red Bull expected he would.

“To be next to Max is a special thing,” he told BBC’s The Inside Track.

“I’m not so sure if, nowadays, someone said, ‘Oh, my big goal is to be next to Max’. They want to be in Formula One. Yes.

“Yuki started well, he didn’t have the success that we expected from him. But on Friday, he’s always within a tenth or two-tenths of Max, which we didn’t have for years.

“So Yuki has to translate his speed, which is there, into points.”

Tsunoda’s struggles in the RB21 have led to speculation that he could be replaced before the season is over, making way for Racing Bulls’ Isack Hadjar who has impressed in his debut F1 campaign.

For now, though, Marko is backing Tsunoda to get it right and perhaps even make it onto the podium.

“He has the talent,” said the Red Bull motorsport advisor, “and he improved, also in his personal approach. We all know how impulsive Yuki can be on the radio. He learned out of it, and he’s a quick driver.

“You just have to get his act together, not to try to beat Max, which is impossible. But I think he has accepted that, and I hope he will make a lot of points.”

Tsunoda is not the first Red Bull driver to struggle against Max Verstappen; Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Sergio Perez and Lawson all suffering the same fate.

Albon believes it is the “knife-edge” characteristics of the Red Bull cars that have hurt Verstappen’s team-mates, especially those coming through the sister team Racing Bulls where the car is specifically designed to be easy to drive.

“I think the cars are on a knife edge,” he explained. “I think Max can drive it.

“Obviously I can speak from experience, I struggled a bit. I think with the experience I have now, I’d be able to get around it, but it’s not something that feels that natural to most drivers. I think that’s what you’re seeing now.

“I think that it’s also difficult because, partly, maybe it’s my own interpretation of it, the RB is quite a forgiving car. I mentioned it before in 2019, it’s quite well balanced, it’s very stable. Gives you a lot of confidence.

“And I think it’s naturally become that kind of car because they always have rookies. The foundations of the team is built on young drivers.

“And then the Red Bull is almost the extreme, and you go from one of the cars that are forgiving, to tricky, in the most simple sense. And so you’re having to adapt quite a lot to two very different cars.”

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