The world championship standings show a Red Bull in third place, the only team able to interrupt McLaren’s dominance in this start to the season on Sundays, thanks to the victory in Japan in front of the two MCL39s with Max Verstappen.
Yet, the start of the season for the Milton Keynes team has not been straightforward, partly due to an RB21 that has not delivered exactly the expected results. The goal was to simplify the RB20 and widen its operating window in an attempt to give the team and the drivers more setup options.
However, despite some overall improvement, the RB21 has proven to be a complex and difficult car to drive, even for Yuki Tsunoda, who joined Red Bull to replace Liam Lawson after just two races, given Lawson’s severe difficulties.
From the first laps at Suzuka, Tsunoda gave positive indications, at least managing to climb out of the back rows of the standings where Lawson had remained stuck both in Australia and China without showing clear progress. The Japanese driver has been able to better digest certain characteristics of the RB21, although his adaptation period is far from over.
This is one of the reasons Red Bull is praising him, considering also the pressure he is under, having been catapulted into a new environment and up against Verstappen. Red Bull’s goal is not to beat Max, but to stay within a certain margin that allows Tsunoda to enter the top 10 and score points, something he could have done in Jeddah without the incident.
Compared to the Red Bull, the Racing Bulls clearly has less downforce and lower performance peaks, but it can rely on a wider operating window, which allows drivers and engineers to more easily push the VCARB02 to its limit. This is particularly noticeable over a single lap, where Tsunoda actually felt more comfortable with the Racing Bulls than with the Red Bull, as shown by his fifth place in Australia.
So far, in his experience with the RB21, the Japanese driver has managed to reach Q3 twice, in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, along with a Q2 elimination in Japan in his first weekend with the Anglo-Austrian team. Analyzing the qualifying sessions contested with Red Bull so far, interesting elements emerge, both in the comparison with Verstappen and in the ability to extract the maximum from the car.
Mistakes come from not fully understanding the RB21
Tsunoda has struggled to piece everything together during the final part of qualifying, when the absolute limit of the car is sought, to the point of failing to improve his Q2 time. In Bahrain, he paid for a mistake at the Turn 10 hairpin, while in Saudi Arabia, a slip-up coming out of Turn 4 cost him dearly.
Mistakes that recall the same “adaptation” process experienced by Lawson, who, in his two qualifying sessions with the RB21, was never able to complete his final attempt without errors, confirming just how much the car was on the edge.
From the beginning, the Japanese driver was struck by the extreme responsiveness of the Red Bull’s front end, much more sensitive than that of the VCARB02, which, as is natural, requires an assimilation period.
“It’s the first time I’ve driven a completely different car. Until now, I had only driven with the VCARB for the past four years, so it’s the first time driving for a different team,” Tsunoda explained during the Jeddah weekend.
“I still feel like a rookie in this team, so I’m exploring a lot of setups. I already knew how Max builds that feeling of confidence during a weekend compared to how I do it. It’s a different way, also because Max already has extreme confidence in this car.”
Analyzing the first two weekends with Red Bull, Verstappen and Tsunoda have raced with different setups: the Japanese driver competed with more downforce to find greater consistency in the car’s behavior, while Verstappen, as with previous teammates, has always been able to manage a looser rear end, which also helps in terms of top speed.
An important aspect, especially considering how the RB21 builds lap time, particularly on the straights and in medium-high speed corners, where Max’s versatility offers an advantage. Nevertheless, Yuki believes he has reached a good level of confidence with the car, considering that he’s only at his third GP with the RB21.
It’s not “just” about speed – and Max is a step ahead
“In terms of confidence, I’m happy, considering I’ve only done a few races and that it will continue to grow. For now, I’m trying to understand how this car works, how to put it in the window it wants, in terms of tire warm-up and setup. I think I haven’t even understood half of it yet. These things are the key points I’m working on to grasp as quickly as possible.”
It’s no coincidence that, speaking about managing to piece performance together at critical moments, Tsunoda mentioned a lack of consistency. Often, the RB21 has shown itself to be a rather unpredictable and difficult car to drive, making it tough to find the necessary consistency at the limit. But that is not the only reason.
Especially over a single lap, understanding the car’s limit is crucial, but it is equally vital to prepare the attempt in the best possible way, especially in an era where the tires are so sensitive to temperature changes. This aspect is even more challenging considering the RB21’s narrow operating window, which only Verstappen manages to interpret and master.
“Max perceives more things than me in the car, such as the tire temperatures when exiting the garage. When the temperatures drop from Q1 to Q3, Max adapts. When the temperature drops, he knows how to adapt his warm-up lap, how to warm up the tires in every corner, maybe by increasing the pace or doing other things.”
“I, on the other hand, didn’t feel that. I wasn’t able to perceive what I used to feel with the Racing Bulls. I still can’t feel it with this car, maybe simply because I’m not driving completely relaxed,” added Tsunoda, emphasizing how he lacks the naturalness he had with the Racing Bulls.
Building a new relationship too
“I think those details are really important with these regulations, which make the tires very sensitive, and a tenth, or even a few milliseconds in each corner, makes a big difference.” Details that are built not only with greater confidence in the car, but also in the relationship with one’s race engineer, one of the strong points of the Verstappen-Lambiase pairing.
Looking back a few weeks, in Bahrain Tsunoda explained how he was still searching for the feeling with his new race engineer at Red Bull, something that takes time to develop. “It’s part of the learning process. We have to make everything much smoother operationally: tire warm-up, steering wheel switches, all these things. It’s been rather chaotic overall. Maybe Woody [Richard Wood, race engineer] and I should go out tonight and strengthen our relationship a bit!” the Japanese driver joked in Sakhir.
In fact, Tsunoda had also changed race engineer at Racing Bulls in 2024, when Ernesto Desiderio replaced Mattia Spini, who was promoted to another role. However, Desiderio had already been in the team for some time and had been able to understand how to communicate effectively with Tsunoda, easing the transition.
In recent days, to facilitate and speed up his adaptation to the Red Bull environment, the Milton Keynes team organized both an intense simulator session and track time with an RB19: an opportunity to accumulate mileage away from the pressures of a race weekend.
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