Yuki Tsunoda has been destroyed
Yuki Tsunoda took a beating at the hands of Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen in 2025
It was never going to end well, exposing Yuki Tsunoda to the same environment as Max Verstappen at Red Bull.
And now look what’s happened. Tsunoda has been left without a seat for the F1 2026 season with Isack Hadjar taking his place.
Yuki Tsunoda had the light taken from his eyes by Max Verstappen
A version of this article originally appeared in PlanetF1.com’s conclusions from the 2025 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
The great unanswered question of Red Bull’s decision to drop – sorry, demote – Yuki Tsunoda for next season?
Would he still be an F1 driver in 2026 if he had never been promoted to the senior team?
Yuki himself hinted at that alternative reality on Thursday in Abu Dhabi, telling media including PlanetF1.com that his only regret about joining Red Bull was giving up a “pretty good f**king car” at Racing Bulls.
Imagine how differently he would be perceived now, at the end of his fifth full season, had he remained where he was.
Watch our drifting finale with V14
What if it happened to be Yuki, not Isack Hadjar, sneaking a rare podium for the team at Zandvoort and revelling in the general drivability and compliance of a punchy upper-midfield car?
If the Formula 1 driver market is often likened to musical chairs, Red Bull’s driver situation in 2025 saw that game play out live and uncut.
Liam Lawson was fortunate that he got his implosion out of the way early, affording him the opportunity to reset and rebuild and eventually secure a seat for 2026.
Tsunoda’s own case, of course, was severely weakened from the start by the imminent parting of ways between Red Bull and Honda, giving the team(s) little reason to retain him beyond this season.
Yet it is true also that he just happened to be the one taking the beating from Max Verstappen, still standing but barely so, when the music stopped.
It would be a shame if it hadn’t been so utterly inevitable.
Max Verstappen vs Yuki Tsunoda: Red Bull Racing head-to-head scores for F1 2025
F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates
F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates
It was obvious long before his promotion that Tsunoda was fundamentally unsuited to the role of being Verstappen’s teammate, a reality Red Bull effectively acknowledged by overlooking him in favour of Lawson a year ago.
The great risk of putting him in that position was undoing all the progress he had made since his highly erratic debut season in 2021.
But because the team burned through its other options in quick succession, it was left with no real option but to give Yuki a go when Lawson was left punch drunk by Max.
Perhaps Tsunoda’s real mistake was failing to push harder to leave the Red Bull system when his reputation was at its peak.
There were rumours of interest from the likes of Haas, now under the steady management of Tsunoda’s compatriot Ayao Komatsu, around the time his contract was extended in June 2024.
It would have been perfect for him, having a team boss who literally spoke the same language and could have filled the hole left by Franz Tost, the former AlphaTauri team principal, by becoming something of a mentor to Yuki.
Tsunoda hinted on Thursday that the terms of his Red Bull contract had prevented him from seriously considering opportunities with other teams.
Yet maybe, as with Carlos Sainz in 2017, he could also have been more forceful on the matter and taken charge of his own destiny.
And now Toyota’s tentacles are spreading ever wider at Haas, that avenue is almost certainly closed off for good to Tsunoda, a Honda man to the core, without an unexpected turn of events and the sort of tough decisions he should have taken 18 months ago.
After a patchy start to his F1 career, Tsunoda had been threatening to emerge as a seriously good – perhaps never quite great – grand prix driver in 2023/24.
The team was finally beginning to reap the rewards for its treatment of him – making him move closer to the factory in Faenza, persuading him to take his fitness and diet more seriously and engage with the less appealing aspects of F1 life – in the early days.
Yet it only took a matter of months – 22 races of being exposed to the same environment as Verstappen – for those years of hard work to be left in ruins.
And so let’s throw Tsunoda on to the pile of drivers to have their faces rubbed in the mud, the light taken from their eyes and their reputations torn to shreds by Max.
What a waste.
How Isack Hadjar plans to take on Max Verstappen in F1 2026
Isack Hadjar sat down with PlanetF1.com and other select media outlets at the end of the season to discuss how he plans to take on Max Verstappen in F1 2026.
His view on the matter might come as a surprise.
Rather than setting himself up for a fall, Hadjar believes the key to surviving alongside Max is accepting – right here, right now – that he won’t win the inter-team battle.
That, he reckons, will allow him to stay strong in the face of relentless punishment by Verstappen next season.
He said: “If anything, the goal is to accept that I’m going to be slower the first month.
“I think that, if you go into that mindset, you accept already that it’s going to be very tough… looking at the data and seeing things you can’t achieve yet.
“It’s going to be very frustrating. But if you know, then you’re more prepared.
“Everyone thinks they’re special. Coming in [saying]: ‘He’s a human, I’m gonna beat him.’
“And then you get stomped over. And then the snowball effect starts.
“Whereas, if you come in, you’re like: ‘I’m nowhere near…’
“We’re talking about the best driver on the grid, so the chance that I’m slow at the start of the year is very high.
“So I might as well accept it now and just work towards getting there.
“Of course, I’m hoping to be as fast as him. I’m hoping, but realistically, it’s very little chance.”
Reader reaction: Where Yuki Tsunoda stands after Red Bull demotion
perryferil: Yuki was never going to make it past this year no matter which car he was driving. Honda moved on and he never showed enough tangible promise to move on from the junior team.
He will look back and appreciate the opportunity but I don’t see him being better than most save for Colapinto or Stroll.
Art San: Wondering if Red Bull is missing Checo? They would have had another championship.
Citrus Fruits: “And so let’s throw Tsunoda on to the pile of drivers to have their faces rubbed in the mud, the light taken from their eyes and their reputations torn to shreds by Max”
This is nonsense. Yuki is a very good driver as he has shown when he had a Racing Bulls car under him.
Throwing him into a car designed specifically for Verstappen, that only he can drive, was always going to end badly but to say his reputation is in shreds is utter nonsense.
Put him back in the Racing Bulls and he will be on a par with Hadjar.
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
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