Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies has backed Yuki Tsunoda to make a return to the F1 grid after being dropped for next year.<\/p>\n
The Milton Keynes-based squad announced at the start of December that Isack Hadjar will join in 2026 alongside Max Verstappen, while Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad will fill out the seats at the sister Racing Bulls team.<\/p>\n
It has left Tsunoda without a race seat for next year, although he will remain part of Red Bull as a test and reserve driver.<\/p>\n
Explaining Red Bull’s rationale behind its decision, Mekies told media including RacingNews365: \u201cIt has been a very difficult decision to take. The second seat at Red Bull is not an easy one.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a tough car to drive. And of course, we have tried everything we could to support Yuki.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt some stage, we had to make the difficult call between where we were seeing that going for the following years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tsunoda has struggled for form across the campaign, having been promoted to the seat two races into the year to replace a struggling Liam Lawson.<\/p>\n
Mekies highlighted the rapid switch as an indication of how quickly things can change in F1, and how quickly Tsunoda could return to the cockpit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope, and I think, that Yuki will get another chance,\u201d\u00a0Mekies said. \u201cHe will be the reserve driver with us next year. You never know what’s going to happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been quite famous in making fairly swift driver decisions in the past. I recall one moment \u2014 at the end of the 2024 season, Yuki was driving very well.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very difficult for him to digest. Liam was getting the promotion in Red Bull Racing. He went into the winter thinking, was he going to get the chance one day or not?<\/p>\n
\u201cHe came back, and we set ourselves with the team at the time the objective to maximise everything \u2014 to shoot for the stars.<\/p>\n
\u201cThree races after, he was driving in that Red Bull team. So you never know what the future holds. I’m sure everyone in this room and beyond has experienced setbacks \u2014 sometimes hard setbacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a setback for him. But I am confident that he has a lot in him that will allow him to have another opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies has backed Yuki Tsunoda to make a return to the F1 grid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,2476,578,2479,2477,2480,2478,930,576,577,932,1885,2475,582,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-345394","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-daniel-ricciardo","11":"tag-f1","12":"tag-f1-calendar","13":"tag-f1-live","14":"tag-f1-results","15":"tag-f1-standings","16":"tag-ferrari","17":"tag-formula-1","18":"tag-formula1","19":"tag-lewis-hamilton","20":"tag-max-verstappen","21":"tag-motorsport","22":"tag-racing","23":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}