Yuki Tsunoda details the “biggest mistake” he made as a Red Bull F1 driver

Yuki Tsunoda has delved into his struggles at Red Bull during the 2025 Formula 1 season and admitted to the “biggest mistake” he made. 

The 26-year-old Japanese driver was parachuted into Red Bull’s driver line-up just three races into the 2025 season as a replacement for the struggling Liam Lawson, who was brutally demoted back to Racing Bulls. 

But Tsunoda also struggled to match the performance of his team-mate Max Verstappen and was ultimately dropped by Red Bull for the 2026 season.  

Speaking in an interview with the Beyond The Grid podcast, a remarkably honest Tsunoda shed light on his failure to master Red Bull’s notoriously tricky RB21 challenger. 

“Normally I'm able to understand the car, what I'm driving, what kind of characteristic,” Tsunoda explained, “but it feels like even after Abu Dhabi, I didn't know what kind of car I was driving. 

“I still don't understand what was the issue and what things made me very struggle to learn about this car and get used to the car. I thought confidence was there, but some race I just somehow lost the confidence. I still don't understand the car, to be honest.”

Tsunoda admitted he had too big an ego to change his driving style, but thinks his attempts to copy Verstappen’s set-up choices played a decisive role in his downfall. 

“One thing about myself: I have big enough ego to not change my driving style,” he said. 

“I know what I'm doing in terms of driving and I believe in myself. So, I never try to change my driving style to another driver’s, even though the driver is competitive and fast.

“Obviously for Max, it's a different case. He's a world champion, he proves a lot of things and I still learn a lot of things from his driving.

“My core driving is the same. And at some time, probably the first year out of any years since I started, I thought about changing driving style and trying to do something similar to Max. But in my perspective, if I just look at data, I didn't really see a huge difference in terms of driving.

“What I did most – and what I think now was the biggest mistake last year – was to try to replicate the set-up, what he's doing; even knowing that sometimes, if I feel the car very oversteer, Max's [set-up] in theory makes the car worse, more sensitive in the direction change, or makes the car slide more. 

“I tend to choose the set-up, even though I'm already struggling with oversteer. It can happen sometimes the opposite way as well: even though I'm struggling with understeer, his car is more understeer. I try to replicate that.”