Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko has delivered the biggest update yet on the team’s driver pairing for next season, confirming the evaluations of its drivers will start “after the summer break”.<\/p>\n
The second Red Bull seat is currently available for 2026, with Yuki Tsunoda only contracted until the end of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tsunoda has struggled since replacing Liam Lawson after the Chinese Grand Prix, and is currently enduring the longest point-less streak of any Red Bull driver in F1 history.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He has faced four Q1 eliminations in the past eight grands prix, but has also failed to score a point across the last seven races.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, the Japanese driver was within two-tenths of Max Verstappen over one lap in Hungary, leading to much praise from Marko and team principal Laurent Mekies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is not just Tsunoda who Red Bull will evaluate, as it will also take a look at Racing Bulls drivers Lawson and Isack Hadjar.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Our drivers are traditionally evaluated after the summer break,” Marko told F1-Insider. At the moment, everything is still open. We look at performance, both positive and negative.”<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tMarko’s clear message to second Red Bull driver<\/p>\n
Of course, Verstappen confirmed ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix that he will drive for the Milton Keynes-based outfit next year, with only his team-mate to be decided.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For whoever that ends up being, Marko has a clear message.<\/p>\n
“Whoever drives next to Max must stop trying to beat him,” insisted the 82-year-old. “He has to bring out the best for himself and the team. It is currently impossible to beat Max.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is a significant period coming up for Red Bull, as it will say farewell to Honda after the final 10 rounds to become its own power unit supplier for the new regulations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Japanese manufacturer has powered the Austrian squad to unimaginable feats in recent years, but has also supported Tsunoda since 2016.<\/p>\n
Honda will partner Aston Martin from next season, with Marko having revealed that talks are already underway between Honda and Red Bull surrounding Tsunoda for 2026.<\/p>\n
“We usually only start assessing drivers during the summer break,” Marko highlighted to Krone Zeitung. “Yuki has always been a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Honda and there are talks with them. Then we’ll see which way it goes.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko has delivered the biggest update yet on the team’s driver pairing for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[3007,1687,3010,3008,3011,3009,831,372,6537,832,3006,3005,3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-58944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}