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Yuki Tsunoda admits copying Max Verstappen set-ups was his biggest Red Bull mistake
Reflecting on his difficult 2025 campaign, Yuki Tsunoda says trying to replicate team-mate Max Verstappen's car set-ups derailed his time at Red Bull.
By Lesley Bakker - 2026-09-20T12:00:00.000Z - 3 min read
Yuki Tsunoda has offered a remarkably frank assessment of his difficult stint with Red Bull during the 2025 Formula 1 season, highlighting the specific tactical error that he believes derailed his campaign. The Japanese driver was promoted to the Milton Keynes squad just three rounds into the 2025 season as a replacement for the struggling Liam Lawson, who had been demoted back to Racing Bulls. Despite the high-profile opportunity, Tsunoda struggled to match the performance benchmark set by team-mate Max Verstappen and was ultimately dropped from the team ahead of the 2026 season.
Speaking in an interview on the Beyond The Grid podcast, Tsunoda laid bare his inability to come to grips with Red Bull’s notoriously challenging RB21 challenger. While drivers typically develop an intuitive feel for a machine's handling characteristics over time, Tsunoda confessed that even by the end of the season in Abu Dhabi, he remained entirely mystified by the car. He noted that despite feeling initial confidence heading into various weekends, that certainty would evaporate mid-event, leaving him struggling to comprehend the root causes of his persistent pace deficit.
The 26-year-old acknowledged that his own stubbornness played a part in the initial phase of his struggle, pointing to his strong belief in his own driving capabilities. Accustomed to trusting his personal feel for a racing car, he was initially reluctant to alter his fundamental driving style to match a teammate. However, as the performance gap persisted, he eventually began looking outward for solutions, leading to what he now regards as a decisive error in judgment.
Rather than trusting the data which showed no massive divergence in their core driving lines, Tsunoda chose to chase performance by copying Verstappen's engineering configurations. He admitted that attempting to mirror the world champion's exact set-up choices was a major miscalculation, particularly given the stark differences in their physical handling preferences. Adopting settings geared toward Verstappen often exacerbated Tsunoda's own handling issues, making the car overly sensitive or prone to sliding.
Tsunoda explained that he would frequently opt for set-up paths that went against his own comfort zone, blindly following configurations even when they contradicted his natural balance requirements. If Verstappen's car leaned toward oversteer, Tsunoda would sometimes try to replicate it despite already battling an oversteering chassis, and the same counterproductive process occurred when dealing with understeer. In hindsight, the driver views this tactical pivot away from his own baseline preferences as the turning point that derailed his Red Bull tenure.
The turbulent 2025 season ultimately marked a painful end to Tsunoda's opportunities within the senior Red Bull outfit, closing a chapter that had begun with immense promise following his mid-season promotion. By laying bare his tactical missteps and the invisible barrier he faced with the RB21, Tsunoda has provided a rare, unvarnished look into the unforgiving reality of operating alongside a benchmark driver inside a top-tier Formula 1 team.