SUZUKA, Japan — Yuki Tsunoda‘s big break in Formula 1 looked to have slipped away. Red Bull never quite believed. Honda’s support had seemingly started to drift.

Now, though, with a Red Bull debut at his home of Suzuka on the horizon, his moment has finally arrived.

The questions come thick and fast. Can he deliver? Has it all come too late?

The turnaround in the days since the Chinese Grand Prix — and Tsunoda’s promotion from Racing Bulls at the expense of Liam Lawson — has been nothing short of remarkable, even by F1’s standards. Tsunoda, who for so long seemed to be frustratingly out of reach of the coveted Red Bull Racing drive, has now been given it, and how he handles the challenge will determine his career trajectory from this point.

Measuring success as Max Verstappen‘s teammate is difficult, but the bar from the past four drivers to have gone alongside him is low. The immediate task ahead of him is simple: tame Red Bull’s RB21. It’s a car that seems to be like many of its predecessors: fast in the talented hands of a great like Verstappen, but a beast to wrestle with in the hands of mere mortals. It’s a confidence killer.

Before looking at the opportunity presented to Tsunoda, it’s worth considering some of the curiosities that got him, Red Bull and Honda to this moment in time.

The Yuki U-turn

Behind Tsunoda’s promotion was a feeling that, as Lawson made an alarmingly poor start, the 24-year-old Japanese driver was now the fully polished product that Red Bull Racing had so long wanted him to be.

“Yuki Tsunoda is a fast driver, we know that, but he’s had his ups and downs”, Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko said after the promotion was confirmed last week. “That’s why we thought Lawson was the better and stronger candidate, but Yuki has undergone a transformation. He changed his management, and in this situation, this was simply the best option.”

Many would say Tsunoda’s transformation has been obvious for a lot longer than just the recent weeks of 2025. Not for Red Bull, apparently. As recently as December, the company was openly contemplating moving on from him entirely.

“We’re acutely aware that if we’re not able to provide an opportunity for Yuki in all honesty this year, does [keeping him on] make sense,” team principal Christian Horner asked ESPN and other media at an event at the end of 2024, shortly after the company had opted for Lawson. “You can’t have a driver in the support team for five years. You can’t always be the bridesmaid. You’ve either got to let them go at that point or look at something different.”

No one at that event, least of all Horner, would have predicted that Tsunoda’s elevation from bridesmaid to bride would have in just the third race of the following season. The rap on Tsunoda, from Horner’s perspective, had been that his temperament was not there. Apparently, in the space of a few short weeks, that is no longer a concern.

How could Tsunoda not have been considered ready just four months ago, but now is?

And then there’s the role Honda plays in all of this. Recent reports claimed the Japanese automaker offered as much as $10 million to secure Red Bull’s second seat for Tsunoda, but sources have told ESPN that the sweetener presented was actually a discount on the final year of the company’s engine deal — a deal Red Bull reluctantly paid over the odds for after its relationship with Renault broke down in 2018 and Ferrari and Mercedes refused to supply engines — rather than an outright payment.

It’s not an insignificant gesture from the manufacturer, but it raises another question. Given that Red Bull was involved in an expensive payout with Sergio Pérez last year — which sources have told ESPN was more than $12 million — then it is even more bizarre that Tsunoda’s experience and the financial help of the team’s outgoing engine partner were not enough to convince Horner & Co.

There’s another wrinkle, too, in Honda itself. Its ongoing support of Tsunoda had appeared uncertain recently, but it has done a 180 even quicker than Red Bull. Mere weeks ago, Honda’s head of racing appeared to be gently nudging Tsunoda toward the exit.

“He needs to take action himself,” Honda Racing Corporation president Koji Watanabe told Motorsport.com. “I want him to make the best choices for himself.

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Red Bull unveil one-off white livery for Japanese Grand Prix

Red Bull unveil a one-off white livery in a tribute to Honda for the Japanese Grand Prix.

“There’s not much more we can do for him. He needs to solidify his support team, including his manager, and secure the necessary seat. He is a professional, after all. Drivers can’t rely on Honda forever. Someone of Tsunoda’s career level needs to think for himself.”

Given that Tsunoda was stood at Honda’s HQ a few weeks later, his first outing as a Red Bull Racing driver, those quotes are remarkable to read now.

A key figure appears to have made a difference here. Much has been made of his new manager, partnering with Mexican agent Diego Menchaca after parting ways with Mario Miyakawa and Luis Alvarez. Sources have told ESPN that Tsunoda’s former team was seen as a hindrance to his chances of moving up.

His change in management appears to have come with a change in approach and perception. How much of an impact that could have really made in a handful of months is hard to quantify, but it is telling that it is a factor that has been mentioned by Red Bull and Honda alike.

All on Yuki

Regardless of how he got there, Tsunoda now has a make-or-break opportunity he simply has to take. The deck does seemed stacked against him from the get-go. The RB21 looks like a handful to drive and Tsunoda is already on the back foot, having missed testing and two race weekends to acclimatize. Although easy to focus on his dreamy home debut in Suzuka, he actually arrives on the eve of a three-week triple header — Japan is followed by races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. A slow start might be hard to get out of if he suffers a spiral in confidence at the hands of the unforgiving car.

Red Bull’s ongoing uncertainty over promoting Tsunoda had always been hard to fathom, though. It’s difficult to spot those ups and downs Marko mentioned, especially in the past couple of seasons.

In Verstappen, Tsunoda is now alongside a man known, fairly, as a destroyer of teammates — but the Japanese driver can claim this to a degree, too. Tsunoda’s strong form quickened Nyck de Vries’ demise early in 2023. Daniel Ricciardo had some occasional bright moments in his place, but the Australian’s contrast in form to Tsunoda — especially early last season, when the car was competitive in the midfield — was stark and destroyed the idea within Red Bull that the returning Ricciardo was the right guy to replace Pérez. Tsunoda had also performed well against Lawson, although the Kiwi showed some impressive flashes that impressed Red Bull management.

Tsunoda’s promotion is Red Bull righting a wrong it made. It clearly should have been him alongside Verstappen from the start of 2025. The Japanese driver spent a mammoth 89 races at the junior team. Ricciardo got 39 in his first stint before promotion, while Sebastian Vettel and Verstappen had 25 and 23, respectively. Red Bull had been reluctant to push its brightest starlet since Verstappen’s graduation to the senior team in 2016 through its own pipeline.

Frustratingly for anyone wanting Tsunoda to succeed, he appears to have been dropped into the deep end.

Sources have already suggested to ESPN that Tsunoda is not considered the long-term fix at Red Bull; he is simply a better option in the here and now than Lawson, and more likely to be competitive if Red Bull can fix its temperamental car and get a sniff in the constructors’ championship fight. That might seem like a long shot, but Red Bull appears to be putting a fair amount of hope on the upcoming flexi wing ban coming into force at the Spanish Grand Prix.

In terms of expectation setting, Tsunoda just needs to be in the mix, delivering good results for his teammate.

“In the end, Red Bull Racing are focused on Max [Verstappen] scoring a drivers’ championship,” Tsunoda told BBC Radio 5 Live. “He has proven himself to have good potential to be a world champion — even though Red Bull seems to be struggling a little bit. Performance wise, [Horner] wants me to be as close to Max as possible. In some races I can help with the strategy, but he also promised me in some situations that if I’m able to be in front of Max that he wouldn’t necessarily ask me to swap positions and make Max win.”

Whether Red Bull would ever actually do the latter remains to be seen, but the eventuality appears to be a farfetched one at the moment. Given how far off the pace Pérez was last year, and the fact that Lawson was at the opposite end of the timing screens in his first two weeks, it is not a stretch to think Red Bull would be satisfied with middling results from Tsunoda early on — Q3 appearances and points early on would be impressive considering everything he’s facing.

There are wider considerations for Tsunoda now, too.

Previously it had appeared as though he was looking at options elsewhere; Cadillac’s incoming F1 team is understood to admire his talent, while last year Haas had tried to get him before turning its attention to Esteban Ocon when it became clear Tsunoda’s bizarre Red Bull deal meant he was effectively stuck where he was. Most will understand if he struggles early on, but the risk of this move coming in the way that it does is that it could destroy the perception he has so brilliantly cultivated in the past few years at the junior team. People in the paddock now know what a handful that Red Bull car is, but it would be a cruel twist if the shot that Tsunoda had been denied so long in fact turned out to be the one that destroyed the goodwill he had garnered since arriving in Formula 1.

That’s the nature of the sport, though. Before, Tsunoda had a fair complaint that Red Bull had never given him the chance to show what he can do. That argument no longer exists. He simply has to make this opportunity work for him. Evidence of other drivers failing at Red Bull and succeeding elsewhere do exist in Alex Albon and Pierre Gasly, but Tsunoda’s elevation has muddied what already looked like a complicated and hard-to-understand career trajectory to this point.