“Defend as hard as you can”: Did Tsunoda’s “team job” cost him a points finish?

Ahead of the Mexican Grand Prix, Yuki Tsunoda made it clear he was prepared to do what Red Bull asked of him to help his team mate’s championship bid.

“Being as high as possible will create more opportunities to play around with the strategy in favour of the team,” said Tsunoda, envisaging scenarios where he could “help Max to have a higher chance to be P1 or make our competitors’ lives more difficult.”

That exact scenario played out in the Mexican Grand Prix. So why was Tsunoda seemingly unhappy with his strategy after the race?

Tsunoda was cagey about exactly how he missed “easy points” after finishing 11th. He referred to an “unfortunate pit stop” which cost him “around 12 seconds, more than that, probably.”

“But also, it’s not just that,” he told Sky. “A couple of things, that I flagged, but I wasn’t able to avoid or… I don’t know, I managed to save those situations, which I can’t say here.”

Red Bull made no attempt to disguise how they deployed Tsunoda during the race to aid Verstappen’s cause. But his frustration at the end of the race had other causes too.

Tsunoda immediately made himself useful to Verstappen’s championship bid by passing points leader Oscar Piastri on the first lap. However, as the Red Bull driver was on mediums and the McLaren was on softs, it only took Piastri until lap 10 to find a way past – and Tsunoda did not put up much of a fight.

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However he played a vital role in the laps prior to Verstappen’s pit stop. Both Red Bull drivers started on the medium tyre compound while the other front runners opted for softs.

That allowed Verstappen and Tsunoda, still on their original sets of tyres, to rise to third and fourth places respectively by lap 28. Behind them came Oliver Bearman, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, George Russell and Oscar Piastri who had all swapped their soft tyres for mediums and were hoping to run to the end without pitting again.

To see off this threat from three cars trying to ‘undercut’ Verstappen (plus Bearman who was ahead of him before pitting), Tsunoda’s race engineer Richard Wood told him they would delay his pit stop by five laps, and once Bearman closed within range urged him to delay the Haas as much as he could:

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Bearman’s race engineer Ronan O’Hare warned him about what Red Bull were doing:

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Defending takes time, so this strategy was always going to hurt Tsunoda’s race. As Bearman, Antonelli, Russell and Piastri worked their way past, Tsunoda lost almost six seconds over four laps.

After the race Verstappen expressed his surprise that other drivers near the front of the field didn’t start on the mediums like he did. However there’s an obvious reason why: they didn’t have the luxury of their team mate also starting on mediums and compromising their race by acting as a spoiler.

Both Red Bull drivers were reporting their tyres were starting to fade at this point. “These tyres are struggling massively,” reported Verstappen after his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase told him Tsunoda had “got Bearman and the rest of the train behind him.”

“We’re going to be coming out towards the back of that train anyway, Max,” Lambiase told him. Sure enough, Verstappen did, and thanks to Tsunoda he was closer than he would otherwise have been. All four cars in the train opted to make a second pit stop rather than try to out-run the Red Bull.

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Helping Verstappen certainly cost Tsunoda some time, though no more than half the “12 seconds” he estimated. But he was also clearly frustrated with other aspects of how Red Bull managed his race, notably when he suffered a slow pit stop, which cost him around nine seconds more. He was also given the wrong engine ‘strat’ setting when he came in for his first pit stop:

His frustration hit a peak on lap 38 when Gabriel Bortoleto jumped ahead of him through the pits. The Sauber driver, running the same strategy, had gained on Tsunoda as he lost time being overtaken. He stayed out a lap longer than Tsunoda and emerged from the pits ahead of him.

Tsunoda was deeply unimpressed to discover Red Bull had failed to warn him how close the Sauber was and gave him a late instruction to use his ‘overtake’ engine performance setting. When Wood said he did not have the relevant information to hand, Tsunoda pointed out he could have seen the Sauber drive past him on the pit wall:

Bortoleto went on to claim the final points place, Tsunoda unable to catch him. “You did a bit of a team job for us today,” said Wood in consolation after he took the chequered flag.

Playing the team role undoubtedly set Tsunoda back early on. But it’s unusual to see Red Bull make the kind of mistake they did, which probably finished off Tsunoda’s chances of taking a point on Sunday. No wonder he was biting his tongue in frustration afterwards.

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2025 Mexican Grand Prix

• Mercedes admit they took too long to take team orders decision in Mexico
• “Defend as hard as you can”: Did Tsunoda’s “team job” cost him a points finish?
• Verstappen’s race ban threat fades after 11 consecutive rounds without penalty points
• ‘This kid’s a f***ing joke’: Russell’s reaction to being forced off by Verstappen
• “I was ahead of Charles”: Hamilton repeatedly asked Ferrari about turn one penalties

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