According to Helmut Marko, Adrian Newey didn't want Yuki Tsunoda at Red Bull

Yuki tsunoda will make its first Red Bull Grand Prix this weekend after being promoted at the expense of Liam Lawson, demoted to Racing Bulls following his poor results in the first two Grands Prix of 2025. Faced with this situation, one question remains: why not have put the Japanese in the Red Bull from the start of the season?

The arguments for such a decision were numerous: Yuki Tsunoda is an experienced driver – 2025 is his fifth season in Formula 1 -, and was able to produce decent results at the wheel of his Racing Bulls during the 2024 season. However, he was not chosen to replace the Mexican Sergio Pérez, in total loss in the face of the omnipotent Max Verstappen, and Liam Lawson was promoted at the expense of Nippon. 

In an interview given to the Austrian media Kleine Zeitung, Helmut Marko provided some answers regarding this choice which turned out to be " not be the right decision, he acknowledges. For a long time, Yuki wasn't consistent and made stupid mistakes here and there. Lawson was the opposite: he would come in and immediately deliver a good performance, no matter the pressure," explains Red Bull's special advisor.

Adrian Newey against the arrival of Yuki Tsunoda?

Helmut Marko's arguments are not new and have already been used to justify the choice of the Austrian team. However, this time he raised a new topic: the impact of Adrian Newey, former Red Bull Racing technology director, on this decision. A lot can be attributed to a single incident. At Silverstone in 2022, Tsunoda crashed into the car of Pierre Gasly (then teammates at Alpha Tauri. Editor’s note) and parts of the cars on the track then damaged the underside of Verstappen's car, causing him to lose the race, explains the Austrian before revealing: Adrian Newey was furious at the time. From that moment on, Yuki had become a black sheep for him.

Marko thus suggests that the British engineer would be partly responsible for Yuki Tsunoda not being a permanent member of the parent team, before adding: "Now Adrian is gone and Yuki has been working hard on himself." 

A certain influence

Although it is not known exactly how much influence the aerodynamicist had in the selection of Red Bull drivers, it is likely that it was significant. If we go back in time to Adrian Newey's professional life, the Englishman has been pleading with his teams since 1993 to have an influence on the allocation of seats. At that time, the British engineer was at Williams and had negotiated a clause in his contract allowing him to have a say in important team decisions, including driver selection. Faced with the failure of his managers, notably Frank Williams, to respect this clause, Adrian Newey decided to leave the Grove team in 1997. Thus, 28 years and 7 Constructors' Championships later, one can imagine his influence on the decisions of his teams...

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