What will Red Bull do if Max Verstappen is suspended for a Grand Prix in 2025?

The 2025 season hasn't even started yet and already two drivers find themselves with the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) and Max Verstappen (Red Bull) are the two drivers with, at the time of writing, the most penalty points on their "points license", with 8 points out of the 12 authorized. We remind you of the rule: once you reach 12 penalty points, it is automatically a suspension race. Ask Kevin Magnussen, he knows something about it: in 2024, the Dane was the first driver to receive a race suspension since the introduction of the points-based license, and had to watch the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on his television.

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If, for the Spaniard, the danger is still quite relative since he will recover three points on March 24 (the day after the Chinese Grand Prix, the 2nd round of the 2025 season), as far as the Dutchman is concerned, the situation is much more complicated. Indeed, the four-time reigning world champion will not recover his first points until June 30, that is… after the Austrian Grand Prix, the 11th round of the championship! During the first eleven Grands Prix, the Red Bull driver will therefore have to behave himself and avoid collecting four additional points to avoid suspension.

Tsunoda, the obvious solution

But let's imagine that this happens. Let's imagine that Max Verstappen gets penalized again and takes four additional penalty points before this June 30, 2025. The Dutchman would then be forced to sit out a Grand Prix, and Red Bull would find itself in the difficult situation of finding a replacement for its star driver. What would the Austrian team do in this case?

An obvious solution presents itself to Christian Horner's team. Indeed, if this remains to be confirmed, Yuki Tsunoda reportedly Red Bull's reserve driver in 2025. The Japanese, beaten in the race for the second seat by Liam Lawson, would be offered a sort of "consolation prize" by being the reserve driver of the parent team... and available to Red Bull if ever Max Verstappen had to suffer a penalty race. The Racing Bulls driver was able to drive the Red Bull RB20 last December, during the post-season tests in Abu Dhabi.

Red Bull is spoiled for choice

And in case Yuki tsunoda himself, for some reason x or y, is not available to replace Max Verstappen at Red Bull: who could be called by the Austrian team to climb into the RB21 seat? Obviously, several names come to mind: logically, if the Japanese cannot play the luxury replacement at Red Bull, it would be his teammate at Racing Bulls, Isack Hadjar, who would be called. The Frenchman notably participated in three free practice sessions with the parent team in 2023 and 2024.

However, two other options are also possible with Ayumu Iwasa, reserve driver at Racing Bulls, but also… Sébastien Buemi, reserve and development driver at Red Bull. The Swiss, who currently drives in WEC and Formula E, is still linked to the Austrian team and still spends many hours on the simulator in Milton Keynes. And if, at 36 years old and fourteen years after his last full season in F1, the four-time world championEndurance was going to replace the four-time F1 world champion?

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