Let’s not forget about Yuki Tsunoda
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Liam Lawson is one of the big names in Formula 1 at the moment. During his first race of the season, and only his seventh race overall, he was able to score points after starting P19. He has thus been mentioned for the second seat at Red Bull Racing for next year, because Sergio Pérez is not performing well. However, Yuki Tsunoda is being overlooked.
Tsunoda did not have the greatest race during the United States Grand Prix. However, this was partly because of his amazing qualifying. And this has happened before. It is almost a disadvantage to qualify better with a midfield car, because it doesn’t allow for a good strategy. In this case, it meant Tsunoda had to defend from Pérez for almost 20 laps, which cost him tyres, speed and thus positions in the end. Lawson, starting futher back, was able to keep going with his hard tyre, which ended up paying off for him at the end. With this result, Lawson is immediately being mentioned to take Pérez’s seat for next season. And even before this result, people have been mentioning Lawson as the top contender for the seat. However, Tsunoda has been performing insanely well for almost two years now and thus deserves to be considered.
Tsunoda has always had the speed. He has been insanely fast in every single championship he has driven. However, this speed often made him quite messy. He made mistakes and crashed his car a little too often. At least, until Pierre Gasly left the team. The experienced Gasly was obviously the number one driver at Alpha Tauri. When he left, Tsunoda had to prove that he was worthy of that spot. He had to show that he was the better driver between him and Nyck de Vries. And he was. To me it was clear that Tsunoda was always going to be the faster in comparison to De Vries. The only question was whether Tsunoda would be able to perform consistently, without making too many mistakes. Luckily, he was. While he didn’t score a crazy amount of points, mostly because of finishing just outside the points at 11th, he was performing very consistently, and was always ahead of De Vries.
Then De Vries got kicked out and Tsunoda had to prove he could perform better than Daniel Ricciardo. However, with Ricciardo breaking his wrist, there weren’t many races they had together in 2023. Still, Tsunoda was almost always able to outperform Ricciardo in both qualifying and in the races. Lawson, who was filling in for Ricciardo during his injury, was really close to Tsunoda. They are probably on a similar level when talking about speed and race craft. However, Yuki has one advantage: he has experience. Lawson does not. Yes, he has driven in Formula 1 before, but that was only when he had to fill in for Ricciardo so it was only six races. And now this season, he is again only getting six races to prove himself. Would he be able to perform in the Red Bull next to Max Verstappen with only having driven twelve races? I feel like the pressure of the Red Bull and trying to win the constructor’s championship can only be done by a driver who will focus on their own thing and will not get distracted by comparing themselves to Verstappen. It can only be cone by a driver with experience. Tsunoda is that driver.
With Tsunoda’s natural speed, his experience and the development he has gone through in the past few years, he is the perfect candidate for the seat. It would simply be unfair of Red Bull to ignore him and pick Lawson, especially because Lawson has yet to prove himself in the long run. Yes, Lawson has had some great results with very little experience, but there is still the question of whether he can perform consistently while being under pressure. That is something Tsunoda is capable of. Therefore, I hope Red Bull put Tsunoda in their second car next year. If not, Tsunoda will have to go and find a different team where they do appreciate his speed and talent.
