Yuki Tsunoda makes feelings clear about Max Verstappen as Red Bull face internal fight

believes that he will be able to 'beat' when he gets up to speed with his new Red Bull machinery. The Japanese racer replaced after just two rounds of the 2025 campaign and is already making a positive impact. Tsunoda suffered an unfortunate Q2 exit at the Suzuka Circuit in his debut weekend after a promising start, but showed his talent in Bahrain, qualifying close to Verstappen before delivering a top-10 finish in challenging circumstances.

The 24-year-old believes that he is now on the road to reeling in Verstappen, although this will naturally take time. Before him, Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon and Sergio Perez have all failed to pose a consistent threat to the four-time world champion, and their reputations suffered significant damage as a result.

"It's my first time driving a completely different car - I only drove with VCARB for the last four years, so it's the first time I drove a completely different team's car," Tsunoda said ahead of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

"I'm trying to use that, and I know that if I unlock that area, I would be able to probably beat him [Verstappen]. I know myself that I can't beat him straight away, so I'm just trying to build a good baseline and wait for the moment that I can be in the shape, yeah."

Tsunoda would be forgiven for taking some time to adapt to the challenging RB21. Even team-mate Verstappen has struggled to extract consistent performance from the ill-handling Red Bull car, which was arguably the fifth fastest car in Bahrain last weekend.

Addressing the current differences between himself and his new team-mate, Tsunoda continued: "The thing is, he can feel more than myself in the car, like how the tyre temp looks getting out of the garage.

"Qualifying's a good example that [when] temps are going low, lower and lower throughout qualifying, he adjusted, Q1 to Q3 - when the temperature's going lower, he adjusted himself in the warm-up, how he should warm up, how he should put pressure into the tyres in each corner to increase the lap time or increase the pace of the outlap or whatever.

"Inside for me, I didn't feel it that way. I wasn't able to feel what I did in the VCARB. I wasn't able to feel in this car yet, because probably just I'm not fully relaxing, driving this car. I'm just still rushing and not fully in control yet. I think those few details are really important with this current regulation, which is very sensitive on tyres and even that one tenth, the few milliseconds in each corner, will make a lot of difference."