Yuki Tsunoda ‘the worst’ Max Verstappen team-mate, claims Villeneuve

In the opinion of 1997 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve, Yuki Tsunoda is “the worst” Max Verstappen team-mate yet.

Furthermore, Tsunoda has shown his best to be “not good enough” for Red Bull, according to Villeneuve, who does not have one ounce of sympathy for Tsunoda in his current predicament.

Yuki Tsunoda: Can he salvage his Red Bull career?

After four-and-a-bit seasons with Red Bull’s second team, Tsunoda finally received his shot with the senior squad in F1 2025. Liam Lawson was demoted back to Racing Bulls after just two underwhelming races, as Tsunoda moved the other way.

However, Tsunoda has not fared much better. He has scored points in only three grands prix for Red Bull – a grand total of seven overall – which leaves him eighteenth in the Drivers’ standings.

He is comfortably the lowest-ranked driver of the Red Bull stable in F1 2025, Lawson next up the road with 20 points.

In Tsunoda’s defence, there have been signs of improvement since his former Racing Bulls team principal Laurent Mekies took over as Red Bull Racing CEO ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix. There, Tsunoda qualified seventh – his gap to Verstappen a shade under four-tenths – but was not able to convert it into a points finish.

At the following race in Hungary, while Tsunoda suffered Q1 elimination, his qualifying deficit to Verstappen was reduced to a tenth and a half. It was a challenging race weekend for the senior Red Bull squad as a whole, as Verstappen was restricted to ninth in the grand prix, while Tsunoda finished seventeenth.

The recent signs of recovery for Tsunoda did little to impress Villeneuve.

Speaking with Vision4sport about Verstappen’s team-mates – the four-time World Champion having become a team-mate killer at Red Bull – Villeneuve stated: “Tsunoda is probably the worst of them all so far.

“A lot of people say it’s unfair, that the car is made for Max. But Max might be the only one who actually gives good feedback to the team. So yes, they develop the car, so it gets better and better for him.

“They’re not there trying to make it difficult for the number two driver. The thing is, there’s not many like Max. If you look in the past, there were more than one at his level in the paddock. And then you had a few good drivers. And then a few average as well.

“Now there are a lot of good drivers instead of only a few. You don’t really have exceptional drivers anymore. So, Max really stands out. So, it’s hard to put someone next to him. Because if all the drivers that fight each other are barely good, they’ll all look great amongst each other.

“That’s until you get someone like Max and you think, ‘Okay, maybe they’re all not good enough!’ So, is it the fact that all the drivers that have been paired with Max so far have all been average drivers?”

Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda head-to-head in F1 2025

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

Simply, Tsunoda has not been able to “cut it” as a Red Bull driver, Villeneuve believes.

“We know that Max is exceptional but then the drivers next to him have just not been good enough and there’s no point saying, ‘Oh poor them.’ No, they’re just not good enough. That’s it,” Villeneuve continued. “They’re barely good.

“And that’s what has happened with Tsunoda. He’s had four or five years of experience already. He’s had his best and clearly, it’s not good enough. That’s it. So, he’s been given this chance and too bad. And he was wanting that chance, he was screaming for it.

“He was put in and he didn’t cut it. It’s that simple and you can’t feel bad for him. He has been given the chance to be in the top team, and he didn’t cut it. He was promoted to the big league and you can see the frustration. And it’s making him drive even worse because he knows he’s not quick enough right now.”

Tsunoda’s struggle for results has triggered the inevitable speculation over his future with Red Bull.

However, Mekies made it clear that the plan is to support Tsunoda, not to axe him.

“The priority is to give Yuki what he needs to perform,” Mekies told Sky F1 in Hungary. “That’s where, with regards to the second seat, that’s where the priority is. It’s what the team is concentrated on.

“They have been trying that for a number of races now. We are trying to find ways together to make a further step. You know, Spa was very positive, certainly from that perspective.

“Here it’s a bit of a tricky weekend overall, so it’s probably a bit more difficult to judge.

“But there is no reason why Yuki’s performance cannot be what we have seen in the past. And that’s what we are concentrated on right now.”

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