"Red Bull has a sharper, narrower window," claims Tsunoda as he opens up on the RB21's characteristics

While Red Bull driver Yuki Tsunoda has the necessary confidence behind the wheel of his RB21, he still find its difficult to extract everything from his car on a push lap.

After only two races into the season, Yuki Tsunoda replaced Liam Lawson at Red Bull in a swap deal from the Japanese Grand Prix onwards, partnering defending four-time world champion Max Verstappen for the remainder of the 2025 season.

Honda has been reported to have offered the team €10 million to have Tsunoda promoted in time for their home Grand Prix. The Japanese driver qualified fourteenth and finished twelfth on debut, as teammate Verstappen won the race.

The following race in Bahrain saw Tsunoda take his first points for Red Bull with a ninth-place finish. He qualified eighth in Saudi Arabia, but he retired from the race on Sunday after having suffered race-ending damage in a lap-one collision with Pierre Gasly.

Having finished tenth last time out at Miami, Tsunoda has revealed that he still struggles to extract the maximum from his RB21 which has a much narrower operating window than his previous VCARB.

I’ll say it’s not complicated in the sense of trying to drive around, but it’s still not easy, for sure. In VCARB the car was a bit more lenient and forgiving with any directions.

"The Red Bull has a sharper, narrower window where it performs. It’s not easier than VCARB, but better than I thought initially when I jump into Red Bull. This is the first time after joining Formula 1 [that I’m in a different car].

"For four years I drove the same car and knew how to set it up and where the limit was. Now, I just naturally didn’t have to think about it before, but now, in terms of set-ups.

"The set-up I tried a couple of time in Suzuka that I thought would be good, just didn’t work out – even when in the car, the balance felt good, the lap time didn’t reflect it.

Reflecting on the integration into the Red Bull teams, Tsunoda stated that he still needs to fine-tune his working methods with his new race engineer.

"So that needs to come from experience, and sometimes you just have to accept the difficulties of the car. Like, if it feels like a lot of understeer or oversteer, but lap time is good, probably stick to that direction.

"It’s a different approach. I’m learning as much as possible. The team is helping a lot with those direction. I just have to get used to it. But the limit, I just still don’t know yet exactly.

"Like in Q3 in Saudi, I pushed a bit more and had a massive snap, which I didn’t expect. It will get there. I just try to keep my head down and slowly build up.

"Even with the general environment [within the team], me and my engineer – he’s Scottish, so a mix of Scottish English and my Japanese English – it’s a bit interesting. Those things just need more time to blend in."

Pushed on to reveal what he is still missing behind the wheel of his car, Tsunoda said that while he has the necessary confidence, he struggles to put a perfect lap together in qualifying when drivers search for the absolute limit.

"It just needs more time, I guess, to get used to it fully. I’m happy with the progress so far. The confidence is quite there, but just when you push 100% on the limit in qualifying, that’s where you kind of face it for the first time, right?

"Because you don’t push 100% until then. The starting point is always slightly below where I want to be or where I used to start with in FP1, so it takes a bit more time to build up on new tracks. In qualifying, most of the time so far I experience new behaviour from the car and I’m not always able to cope with it.

"I wouldn’t say the car is super difficult – it just needs more time to define where the limit is," Tsunoda said.