Esteban Ocon admits Haas still needs to rebuild its confidence despite what he describes as an amazing turnaround between the first two races of the 2025 season.

Haas had a solid pre-season of testing but was comfortably the slowest car at the Australian Grand Prix and was not in the mix for points in a chaotic race. One week later, the team bounced back with double points in China — eventually promoted from seventh and 10th to fifth and eighth due to post-race penalties — but Ocon says the next target is to be consistently competitive.

“We need to stay on top of our game,” Ocon said. “The confidence is not yet there, because it’s only race two and we’ve been swinging in performance from bottom of the bottom to midfield to now top of the midfield.

“So, we need to stay on top of what we are doing, focus on ourselves and optimize what we have. I know there’s more performance to unlock from the car and that’s very good to see.”

Despite his words of caution, Ocon is full of praise for the job Haas managed to do between back-to-back races in Australia and China, and he hopes it shows what the team is capable of.

“Not that many days ago, we were dead last in Melbourne and it was looking difficult,” he admitted. “But, we didn’t sleep much — we couldn’t eat very much, in the words of Ayao [Komatsu, team principal] — but it was all worth it, because we discussed everything about where to unlock that performance from the car. We knew there was more performance to be had.

“Obviously, it’s a good surprise to see that we still can improve some more, and that’s where we are. So, it’s very good signs. But honestly, amazing turnaround from the team — proud of everyone back in Maranello and Banbury. I think they’ve done an amazing job putting their hearts into it and trying to find solutions.

“So, well done to them and well done to Ollie [Bearman], because double points for us is a massive thing. He was out of position [in the Sprint] and it’s really great to see him coming back on an alternate strategy as well. We’ve made it work, and it’s great to see. So, hopefully only the beginning.”

Andrea Kimi Antonelli has proven to be “a brilliant fit” into Mercedes as Lewis Hamilton’s replacement according to trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin, who believes there is a lot more to come from the rookie.

Mercedes opted to promote 18-year-old Antonelli after just one season of Formula 2 following Hamilton’s switch to Ferrari, marking the first time it has run a rookie driver since returning to the sport in 2010. Off the back of two top-six results to start his F1 career, Antonelli has impressed Mercedes and Shovlin says the team has been enjoying helping him deliver on his potential.

“He’s a brilliant fit in the team,” said Shovlin (pictured above with Antonelli). “It’s difficult to come in after a driver who’s been as successful as Lewis has. And for Kimi, it’s still really early days in his F1 career. Now happily, he’s got an extremely experienced race engineer with Bono [Peter Bonnington] who’s helping him work out how to approach the weekends and how you build your speed and how you work on the car setup.

“Everyone in the team’s quite excited to be working with him and he’s just enjoying it. I think in Melbourne, he couldn’t quite believe he was actually starting an F1 race. Having your first race being a wet one, well, that’s particularly tricky. But he’s settling into it and I think there’s a lot more to come from Kimi.”

Antonelli’s encouraging start has mirrored that of Mercedes, with George Russell scoring two podiums in the opening two rounds, and Shovlin says the early signs are promising for the team.

“We’ve shown that we’ve got a car that works well over a range of circuits,” he said. “What we’ve also seen, though, is that McLaren are probably the team to beat. Max [Verstappen] is pretty quick. Ferrari certainly don’t look like they’re far behind and they’ve had a bit of bad luck. So it’s a pretty tight fight at the front.

“We’re working hard to try and bring development to the car because, as I said, we think that we need to close that gap to McLaren in particular. But we’ve got three very exciting circuits. Suzuka, that’s a fantastic track — very flowing, very fast. A lot of drivers have that as their favorite on the calendar. First time for Kimi, though and that’s quite a tall order for such a young driver to be going there on their third race. But he’s excited to drive [there].

“Then on to Bahrain. We know Bahrain because we’ve been testing there. It has its own challenges, but hopefully we’ll be at least in the fight for podiums. And then Saudi Arabia. That’s a street track, quite smooth, again, a relatively new tarmac and that throws up its own challenges.

“So, three very different circuits. And by the time we’ve done five, we’ll probably get some idea as to the real order. But as I said, it’s just exciting to start a season with a car that’s working well, that the drivers are enjoying driving. It’s much more predictable and we’re looking forward to the remainder.”

Yuki Tsunoda is ready for the toughest job in motorsports. Or, at least, he believes he is. At 24, with four seasons in Formula 1 plus a strong start to 2025 under his belt, he’s better-prepared for this opportunity than the man he replaced, former teammate Liam Lawson, and backs himself to thrive despite the fact that partnering Max Verstappen at Red Bull Racing is regarded by most as career poison.

Tsunoda has nothing to lose. This was destined to be his last year in the Racing Bulls fold, with Red Bull team principal Christian Horner saying last December that after five years in what he called the “support team,” there comes a point where “you’ve either got to let them go at that point or look at something different.” Tsunoda has proved himself worthy of a seat on the F1 grid, but opportunities are limited for ’26 if Red Bull’s B-team does not retain him. The jump to Red Bull presents an opportunity to change the direction of his career, and perhaps even establish himself in a front-running team for the long term.

It’s a big ask, given that not only is he being pitched into a seat regarded by most as the toughest in F1 but also doing so with no prior experience of the car, two races into a season, and for his home grand prix. The devotion of the home crowd and the desire of circuit owner Honda for him to thrive means the pressure will be intense, and how Tsunoda deals with that could set him up for success or failure at Red Bull. He will get more than the ludicrous two weekends afforded to Lawson, but the die will likely be cast one way or the other at Suzuka. Red Bull will soon turn its attention to identifying a replacement for ’26 if Tsunoda doesn’t convince – and convince quickly.

This is a fascinating challenge considering sources within Red Bull have long made it clear that question marks over Tsunoda’s mentality, more than his driving ability, led to him repeatedly being passed over for promotion. This all started when Tsunoda first tested for what was then called AlphaTauri in the post-season Abu Dhabi test in 2020 and the team was astonished by how vocal and emotional his communications were over the radio. It is something Tsunoda has, by his own admission, had to work on.

However, the perception has become increasingly anachronistic as Tsunoda has improved what he calls his “emotional control” significantly. The last time there was a notable problem was in the Bahrain Grand Prix in 2024, when team orders frustrated him late on and he made a statement with an odd lunge and lockup past Daniel Ricciardo on the slowdown lap. Since then, Tsunoda has been in a better place, aside from using an ableist slur during Austrian Grand Prix qualifying, for which he offered “big apologies,” as well as paying a substantial fine. But unacceptable language aside, too often legitimate pushbacks to team instructions are interpreted as problematic when they shouldn’t be. The most recent example was in the Chinese Grand Prix, when he was right to demand he work the front end harder and didn’t accept the pit wall telling him not to. Shortly afterwards, his reasoning was understood and the team backed the decision. Therefore, the idea of a driver who is not working with his team is an outdated one.

Tsunoda was relatively undercooked when he first arrived in F1 with AlphaTauri in 2021 (above) but has become far more well-rounded in the years since. Lars Baron/Getty Images

F1 has been a steep learning curve for Tsunoda. When he arrived in 2021, finishing ninth on debut in Bahrain, he had a single season in each of European F3 and F2 under his belt and was still very much a work in progress. He confessed to underestimating how tough the step up to F1 would be, and his first season was a chastening experience with too many mistakes. But he gradually learned, to the point where he was able to become the team’s spearhead once Pierre Gasly left for Alpine at the end of 2022. He’s now a far more dependable driver, and any patchiness in his results is more down to his team’s inconsistency than his own shortcomings.

The first two weekends of this year have illustrated that. In Australia, he ran in the top six until the rain returned on lap 44. The team flip-flopped on strategy, leaving him out for too long while other teams called their cars in, turning a strong result into a pointless afternoon. A similar thing happened in the Chinese Grand Prix, where Racing Bulls stuck with a two-stop strategy as others adapted to one. Only his strong run to sixth in the Shanghai Sprint rewarded him with points in a season where he has been a standout performer. The question now is whether he can translate his superb form at Racing Bulls into Red Bull Racing driving a faster, but much trickier, car.

To make his promotion work, Tsunoda must at least partially replicate Verstappen’s skill for extracting the potential from a difficult car. The Red Bull RB21 has plenty of downforce and grip; the trouble is accessing its potential consistently due to its balance limitations. Success or failure in doing so makes the difference between it being a podium threat and being at risk of elimination in Q1. Verstappen’s extraordinary ability is to drive the car in a way that minimizes the limitations and makes the most of that potential.

In qualifying especially, Verstappen’s otherworldly ability to manipulate the car on the brakes and turn-in is what unlocks its performance. The RB21 is prone to both understeer and rear-end snaps, but Verstappen can load the front axle at turn-in to give it the front end grip it needs without the rear stepping out of line. Doing so requires remarkable sensitivity, precision, adaptability and the capacity to react near-instantaneously to the feedback from the car. It’s the F1 equivalent of walking the tightrope. By contrast, Lawson has fallen repeatedly and therefore driving to a much lower ceiling – hence his references to the difficulty of finding “the sweet spot” with this car.

This isn’t simply the problem of a car developed for Verstappen, who thrives with a strong front end and can control the resulting rear-end instability most find too responsive. While such dynamics have the potential for the highest performance ceiling, this requires astonishing talent to control. Yet with the RB21, Verstappen faces an even tougher challenge with a car he says “is still not where I want it to be.” His driving is a delicate form of bullying that is beyond most.

So can Tsunoda do what Verstappen does? It’s unlikely, given Verstappen is, at 27, already established as one of the all-time greats and few drivers in the history of grand prix racing have his ability. The more pertinent question is whether Tsunoda can approximate the Verstappen technique enough to do the job Red Bull needs. That’s usually framed by the team as being about three-tenths off and banking regular points – although as a racing driver with unshakable confidence, Tsunoda himself will doubtless back himself to do far more than that.

There is a reference point, which is the post-season Abu Dhabi test last year. Tsunoda logged 127 laps in the 2024 Red Bull, which was less an opportunity offered by Red Bull and more one facilitated by power unit supplier Honda, which has backed Tsunoda since his early days in single-seaters. There, Tsunoda claimed to feel comfortable in the car and able to push it to the limit.

Verstappen’s driving style doesn’t work for many other drivers, but Tsunoda will need to adopt elements of it to have a shot at reaching the RB21’s potential. Clive Mason/Getty Images

“I think so — I didn’t really struggle much to adapt,” said Tsunoda. “I didn’t have many dirty laps. On the long runs, I have been able to run consistently and straight away felt the limitations of the car, which if you don’t have confidence in the car, you can’t feel any limitations.”

Although Tsunoda showed what he could do, the die had already been cast and Red Bull’s decision was made – Lawson was going to replace Sergio Perez, subject to the payoff being finalized with the Mexican. The willingness to make the swap with Lawson so early in the season confirms that Tsunoda did a good job in Abu Dhabi.

Tsunoda is definitely better qualified for the challenge than he would have been a couple of years ago and is promoted to Red Bull Racing with the kind of experience two of his predecessors, Alex Albon and Pierre Gasly, had. Tsunoda is, by inclination, a late braker. When I asked him about that in November 2023, this is how he described his style:

“Stronger and fast,” said Tsunoda. “The initial part is stronger. I’ve never seen a driver where the initial part is stronger than me. The releasing part, the later part, he [teammate Ricciardo] is good at. I can learn something from that as a driver.”

This was a significant phase of Tsunoda’s development, one that broadened his window. While his original F1 teammate, Gasly, is also by inclination a late braker, one who thrives attacking the corner provided that the rear end is predictable enough to give him confidence, Ricciardo showed Tsunoda another way. That’s expanded Tsunoda’s toolkit as a driver and, critically, given him a deeper understanding of the value of manipulating the car’s balance using the brakes. To do what Verstappen does, braking late is not an option as it just means struggling to get the car turned. Then you are limited on traction when you try to feed the power in thanks to the extra lock required to get the car through the rest of the corner. Tsunoda at least has a grounding in how to try and achieve this.

The pressure is on, but this is potentially life-changing opportunity for Tsunoda, who can transform himself from handy midfielder to frontrunner. In terms of experience, the timing is right even if it would have been better to give him a winter and pre-season to prepare, but this is the opportunity he craves to prove he can do what Gasly, Albon, Perez and Lawson failed to do before him.

If Tsunoda delivers, and that doesn’t mean matching Verstappen but simply being a useful number two for Red Bull, then this could be a career-making opportunity. If not, it will be a career-breaking one, but at least he’ll have had the belated chance to show what he can do in the least hospitable seat in F1.

Yuki Tsunoda’s “sensational” progress has made him fully deserving of a Red Bull drive, but Racing Bulls team principal Laurent Mekies says he is ready to help Liam Lawson rebuild his confidence.

Red Bull opted to swap the two drivers after just two rounds of the new season after Lawson struggled at Red Bull, failing to escape Q1 in either Australia or China or to get anywhere near a points-paying finish on each occasion. Tsunoda was selected as his replacement early in his fifth season with the junior team, and Mekies says the Japanese driver’s development needs acknowledging amid the shock of the switch.

“We’re incredibly proud of Yuki earning his well-deserved move to Oracle Red Bull Racing,” Mekies said. “His progress last year, and more recently from the very start of 2025, has been nothing less than sensational.

“Personally, and collectively, it has been an immense privilege to witness those progresses for all of us in Faenza and in Milton Keynes. Yuki’s energy and positivity has lightened up every corner of our factories and of our garage and he will always be a Racing Bull! We wish him all the success he deserves at [Red Bull].”

Lawson was dropped by Red Bull after only two races with the team — the fastest change by far, beating the previous record of 12 races for Pierre Gasly in 2019 — and Mekies says his focus is on helping the New Zealander regain the form he showed for Racing Bulls last year.

“Everyone here at VCARB is looking forward to working hard with Liam to give him the best environment possible for him to shine in our car and to express the talent we all know he has. He fit in so well last year, and we cannot wait to challenge ourselves and grow as a team. With Isack [Hadjar] having started so strongly with us already, we know we have a young and strong line-up.”

The change takes place with immediate effect, with Tsunoda racing for Red Bull from his home race at the Japanese Grand Prix onwards. Red Bull said the move was made for sporting reasons alone, with the team already 42 points adrift of McLaren in the constructors’ championship.

I’m actually really sorry to be writing this column, for a number of reasons.

One, because nobody likes a smartass saying “I told you” and quoting themselves, but I’m going to be doing exactly that.

Two, because being right on this occasion means a driver having gone through an extremely challenging spell, and not yet having found their way out the other side of it.

And three, because another driver could well be about to face the same fate. All because of Red Bull’s frankly awful decision-making in 2024.

The “I told you” part relates to the column I wrote back in December, when it became clear that Sergio Perez was being dropped by Red Bull. That was the right move, because Perez had been there for a long time, was the experienced driver who was meant to perform, and the environment just called for a fresh start for both driver and team. There was no light at the end of the tunnel.

What was the wrong move, was selecting Liam Lawson in his place. That’s not being said with hindsight – here’s an excerpt from that column:

“The common denominator is not a single driver, it’s that seat. And that’s where Red Bull’s next move seems all the more wrong … Red Bull is going to follow its old approach of fast-tracking a driver into a position where they are more likely to fail than succeed.

“That’s not a slight on Liam Lawson’s abilities, but on the environment he’s going into based on the experiences of all the drivers before him.”

If you didn’t see it at the time, you can read the full column here to see how I felt Yuki Tsunoda was the right choice to replace Perez for multiple reasons, with one of the main ones being what has happened to many Red Bull young talents in the past.

Christian Horner insisted the decision to promote Lawson was based on his potential, and that he was on a trajectory that would allow him to improve over time. Clearly two races were enough for Red Bull to decide that improvement was too far into the distance, despite Horner’s words over the winter.

Something else Horner said after giving Lawson the seat was, “I think one of the things we’ll be looking to protect Liam from is expectation.” But Red Bull expected far more from him at the opening two rounds of the season. Red Bull is entitled to feel that there was a minimum level that Lawson thus far failed to reach – P20 in each qualifying session in China is as bad as it gets – but the team needs to admit it got it wrong.

Lawson had started just 11 races when he was promoted. He had, and has, so much still to learn in Formula 1, and wasn’t being given the environment in which to do it. For it to go so badly over the opening two race weekends only proves that Red Bull did not have enough data and information from that initial sample set, despite claims to the contrary, and it only has itself to blame.

If you’re a young driver looking at your future career path, then while Red Bull has always appeared brutal, there was also the appeal of having so much of your career funded, and knowing that if you did a good job you would get an opportunity. But with each increasingly poor handling of the seat alongside Max Verstappen, you are likely to push Red Bull further and further down your wishlist and want to sign with other teams.

It was widely acknowledged before the season that the relatively inexperienced Lawson was being thrown into the deep end by Red Bull, but few expected things to unravel quite as quickly as they did.  Mark Thompson/Getty Images

And if you’re one of the Red Bull owners – either Chalerm Yoovidhya or Mark Mateschitz – surely the time has come to ask who truly makes these decisions, how, and why?

Should the blame lie at Horner’s door? Or Helmut Marko’s, as the de facto head of the Red Bull junior driver program? Over the past 18 months the pair have not been consistently on the same page and often have different views on drivers, which in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it clearly is not a dynamic that is working. And perhaps the fact that both have such strong opinions clouds the ability to get the decision-making right.

Horner’s quotes on the move say the choice was made “collectively”, spreading the share of the blame among a nondescript group. One thing that does is allow poor choices to be made without accountability – it seems only the drivers are being held accountable.

You might think the call to swap Tsunoda and Lawson so quickly into this year is a positive outcome as it delivers the driver line-ups that seemed so much more sensible in December. But it comes at the cost of both drivers.

It’s true Lawson is going back into an environment that he performed well in last year, but he now has to rebuild his confidence after such a painful handling. Just two weeks ago he was preparing for his debut with the team at the closest thing he has to a home race, and he has already been deemed not good enough – at least, not right now.

Tsunoda, meanwhile, has to jump into a clearly problematic car at extremely short notice, and try to perform better than the two drivers who went before him. Oh, and he has to do that at a track that will heavily punish the tiniest mistake, all under the immense scrutiny of his home crowd. No pre-season testing, no full winter of preparation with the Red Bull engineering team, nothing.

The fact that Tsunoda’s greater experience is now being cited as one of the key reasons for the switch also doesn’t hold much water, given that experience wasn’t deemed important enough two races ago. It’s not as if Red Bull had enjoyed a smooth run up to the end of last season, so the need for experience this year could certainly have been predicted.

While the Japanese driver might perform better than Lawson had managed to in the opening two rounds, history suggests he’s still unlikely to be particularly close to Verstappen, and history also suggests Red Bull’s management will blame the driver. Again.

The time has come for the team’s leadership to take responsibility for the failings of its second car and stop shifting the blame. Red Bull needs to find a management structure that is all on the same page and working collaboratively, and will front up when it gets things wrong.

No other team has seen such consistently different performance levels between its two sides of the garage than Red Bull over the past five years, and while Verstappen might be performing miracles, last year he showed his frustration as expectations started to grow that he would keep papering over the cracks, as if it was simple.

Of course the Dutchman is such a talent that you have to make him your priority, but working out how to create an environment that another driver can also be competitive in will benefit Verstappen, too. Right now he’s carrying the team.

Red Bull’s slide from dominant force in 2023 to arguably the fourth-fastest team 18 months later has been quite remarkable. And it certainly isn’t all the second driver’s fault.

Before long, the first driver might tire of the blame game, too.

Red Bull has confirmed a driver swap between Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson that will put Tsunoda alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull Racing from the Japanese Grand Prix onwards.

Lawson was only selected to replace Sergio Perez – ahead of Tsunoda – in December, and had just two races with Red Bull prior to the change being made. The New Zealander was unable to escape Q1 in any of the qualifying sessions he took part in, qualifying last in both sessions in China, and was not in the frame for points at either weekend.

Despite the poor start, Red Bull had cited Lawson’s mental strength and greater potential as two key reasons why he was given the drive after just 11 grands prix starts prior to this season, so the decision remains a shock u-turn so early in the year.

The call to make the change was reached with the involvement of key Red Bull stakeholders following the Chinese Grand Prix, and team principal Christian Horner said Tsunoda’s greater experience is now being deemed more valuable against the backdrop of Verstappen’s own difficulty getting consistent pace out of the 2025 car in Shanghai.

“It has been difficult to see Liam struggle with the RB21 at the first two races and as a result we have collectively taken the decision to make an early switch,” Horner said. “We came into the 2025 season, with two ambitions, to retain the World Drivers’ Championship and to reclaim the World Constructors’ title and this is a purely sporting decision.

“We acknowledge there is a lot of work to be done with the RB21 and Yuki’s experience will prove highly beneficial in helping to develop the current car. We welcome him to the team and are looking forward to seeing him behind the wheel of the RB21.”

Tsunoda is entering his fifth season in Formula 1 and has a best finish of fourth place from the final round of his rookie season in Abu Dhabi. He finished sixth in the Sprint in China to give Racing Bulls its first points of the season, and qualified fifth in Australia but was unable to capitalize on changing conditions in the race.

Meanwhile, Horner believes Lawson’s return to Racing Bulls – the team he completed 11 races for over the past two seasons as a substitute driver – will give the 23-year-old the chance to rebuild his confidence.

“We have a duty of care to protect and develop Liam and together, we see that after such a difficult start, it makes sense to act quickly so Liam can gain experience, as he continues his F1 career with Visa Cash App Racing Bulls, an environment and a team he knows very well,” he said.