Yuki Tsunoda, Laurent Mekies, Red Bull, Spa-Francorchamps, 2025

Red Bull will give Yuki Tsunoda until the end of the season to prove he deserves to remain at the team next year.

Tsunoda replaced Liam Lawson who was dropped after two point-less appearances for the team earlier this year. Although Tsunoda has reached the points in four of his 14 starts for the team, only one of those occured in the last four months.

Red Bull has had a turbulent season. Laurent Mekies replaced Christian Horner as team principal four rounds ago. Since then Max Verstappen has confirmed he will continue to drive for the team next year.

Now Mekies has confirmed Tsunoda will see out the season while he chooses Verstappen’s team mate for next year.

“We have enough drivers between the driver programmes to cover quite a few scenarios for next year, and we don’t have real reasons to rush into decisions,” said Mekies before the last race at Monza.

“We do not plan to change during the season. Yuki has made a good step in the last three races. We all want more, but he’s doing a good job.

“He was, for the first time, back in the points after seven races in Zandvoort. He was close enough to Max in Budapest, and had his best qualifying with the team in Spa. So he’s on a positive trend.”

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Tsunoda joined Red Bull from their junior F1 team, Racing Bulls, where he was briefly team mates with Isack Hadjar. Since then Hadjar has out-scored team mate Lawson and impressed by taking his first podium finish at Zandvoort. This has prompted speculation Red Bull may promote him next year.

“It’s obviously extremely nice to watch Isack’s progress in the Racing Bulls car,” said Mekies, who was team principal at Racing Bulls before taking Horner’s job. “To see him performing at the level he did in [Zandvoort] was a fantastic demonstration of how much progress he’s made this season.

“But we are relaxed about the driver topic because fundamentally we have all our cards on the Red Bull side, and we can take a few more weeks – or months – to decide.

“Of course, that doesn’t mean we have to wait until the last race to decide, because we respect that it might impact our drivers one way or another. But for sure we feel we have time right now.”

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