{"id":209312,"date":"2025-06-24T03:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T03:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/209312\/"},"modified":"2025-06-24T03:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T03:13:09","slug":"helmut-marko-issues-fresh-yuki-tsunoda-update-as-verstappen-reality-sinks-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/209312\/","title":{"rendered":"Helmut Marko issues fresh Yuki Tsunoda update as Verstappen reality sinks in"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite achieving notable firsts for the second RB21, Helmut Marko says Yuki Tsunoda has not kicked on like the team expected he would.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Yuki Tsunoda has the speed but\u2026<\/p>\n

Tsunoda<\/a> 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\u2019s first points of the campaign with a P9 result. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s added five points since, but in the last four qualifying sessions, he hasn\u2019t managed to break into Q3 with P20s in Imola, where he crashed, and again Spain, where he just didn\u2019t have the pace.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s meant Verstappen has all but flown the Red Bull flag by himself, scoring 155 of the team\u2019s 162 points. <\/p>\n

With the second car only scoring a trickle of points, Red Bull have fallen to fourth in the Constructors\u2019 Championship<\/a> where they\u2019re over 200 points down on the two-car McLaren team.<\/p>\n

Red Bull team-mates: F1 2025 head-to-head stats<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49\u00a0F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates<\/a><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49\u00a0F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates<\/a><\/p>\n

Marko concedes Tsunoda hasn\u2019t kicked on as Red Bull expected he would.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be next to Max is a special thing,\u201d he told BBC\u2019s The Inside Track<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not so sure if, nowadays, someone said, \u2018Oh, my big goal is to be next to Max\u2019. They want to be in Formula One. Yes. <\/p>\n

\u201cYuki started well, he didn\u2019t have the success that we expected from him. But on Friday, he\u2019s always within a tenth or two-tenths of Max, which we didn\u2019t have for years. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo Yuki has to translate his speed, which is there, into points.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tsunoda\u2019s struggles in the RB21 have led to speculation that he could be replaced before the season is over, making way for Racing Bulls\u2019 Isack Hadjar who has impressed in his debut F1 campaign.<\/p>\n

For now, though, Marko is backing Tsunoda to get it right and perhaps even make it onto the podium.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has the talent,\u201d said the Red Bull motorsport advisor, \u201cand 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\u2019s a quick driver. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Albon believes it is the \u201cknife-edge\u201d characteristics of the Red Bull cars that have hurt Verstappen\u2019s team-mates, especially those coming through the sister team Racing Bulls where the car is specifically designed to be easy to drive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the cars are on a knife edge,\u201d he explained. \u201cI think Max can drive it.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously I can speak from experience, I struggled a bit. I think with the experience I have now, I\u2019d be able to get around it, but it\u2019s not something that feels that natural to most drivers. I think that\u2019s what you\u2019re seeing now.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that it\u2019s also difficult because, partly, maybe it\u2019s my own interpretation of it, the RB is quite a forgiving car. I mentioned it before in 2019, it\u2019s quite well balanced, it\u2019s very stable. Gives you a lot of confidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think it\u2019s naturally become that kind of car because they always have rookies. The foundations of the team is built on young drivers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd 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\u2019re having to adapt quite a lot to two very different cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read next: \u2018Nice seat\u2019 \u2013 Valtteri Bottas comeback rumours in overdrive after Cadillac F1 post<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite achieving notable firsts for the second RB21, Helmut Marko says Yuki Tsunoda has not kicked on like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,225,12,226,79,16,15,860],"class_list":{"0":"post-209312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-home-page","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-red-bull","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-yuki-tsunoda"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}