Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies has issued praise to Yuki Tsunoda as the Japanese driver awaits news on his F1 future.<\/p>\n
Tsunoda joined Red Bull early in the year, stepping up in place of Liam Lawson, who struggled at the opening two rounds.<\/p>\n
However, Tsunoda has also struggled to extract pace from the car alongside Max Verstappen, scoring points at just six of the 18 grands prix he has entered with the Milton Keynes-based squad.<\/p>\n
Red Bull is currently evaluating its driver line-ups for next year at the senior squad and the sister Racing Bulls outfit.<\/p>\n
Mekies praised Tsunoda for the speed on display last time out in Mexico City, insisting his 11th place finish did not reflect his true pace.<\/p>\n
\u201cYuki had his best weekend in a long time,\u201d Mekies told media including RacingNews365. \u201cWe have said that a few times, but it is true.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was very, very close in qualifying to Max, I think it was two tenths in Q2.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c[The race], the first stint was very, very strong as well \u2013 two tenths, three tenths from Max, on the same very long first stint on the medium.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen after, fair enough, we left him out a bit longer because it was an advantage for us to do that, and we had a slightly long pit stop.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe killed a few points that he would have scored on merit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Isack Hadjar is being heavily linked with a promotion to Red Bull next year, while F2 rookie Arvid Lindblad is a leading contender for a Racing Bulls drive.<\/p>\n
Should that materialise, it would leave either Tsunoda or Lawson without a seat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mekies insisted the team is in no rush to come to a decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd of course, it’s one of the reasons why we want to take a bit more time before we make a decision on the drivers,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cYuki is making steps forward, the other kids are making steps forward as well, so we have no reason to rush the decision. We will take a bit more time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies has issued praise to Yuki Tsunoda as the Japanese driver awaits news…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-255941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}