Red Bull's Tsunoda is the latest in a long line of Japanese drivers seeking F1 success

SUZUKA, Japan: Yuki Tsunoda finally has his promotion at Red Bull. That was difficult enough, elevated to the top team last week as Liam Lawson was demoted to Red Bull’s No. 2 Formula 1 team — Racing Bulls — after failing to score points in the season’s first two races.

Delivering will be even tougher as Tsunoda joins a long list of Japanese drivers with varying degrees of success in F1. His first Grand Prix for Red Bull is on Sunday in Japan.

Tsunoda faces pressure before adoring home fans, is another Japanese driver trying to crack through, and bears the weight of racing alongside four-time F1 champion Max Verstappen.

What advice has Red Bull team principal Christian Horner given him?

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“Be close as much as possible to Max,” Tsunoda said Thursday at the Suzuka track. He described as “brutal” not being chosen initially by Red Bull for this season, but looked relaxed taking question about this abrupt promotion.

“I’m not saying I’m confident that I can perform straight away like Max,” he added. But he said he was confident he could produce well compared with “other drivers” Red Bull might have chosen.

Lawson also appeared relaxed, smiling as he took questions about his demotion.

“It’s something I wasn’t expecting,” Lawson said. “It’s something that obviously is not my decision and for me it’s about making the best of it.”

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Lawson attributed part of doing poorly in his first two races with Red Bull to unfamiliar tracks in Australia and China. He’d been hoping to prove himself in Japan, where he drove last season in F1.

This time it will be with Racing Bulls and not Red Bull.

“This is what I was looking forward to from the start, to be honest,” he said, referring to the Suzuka circuit in central Japan. “To a track that I’ve been to before and just have a proper sort of preparation. It’s a track we all like a drivers.”

This is Tsunoda’s fifth season in F1, and he needs to deliver points for Red Bull. His best career finish was fourth place in Abu Dhabi in 2021. He’s finished out of the points with Racing Bulls in the first two Grand Prix races this season, but placed sixth in the sprint race almost two weeks ago in China.

Red Bull’s car this weekend will run with a white paint job, a tribute to automaker Honda. Verstappen has won four consecutive titles with Honda power. This is Red Bull’s last season with Honda, moving next year to Ford. Honda moves to power Aston Martin next season.

This is his best chance, and Tsunoda will have to excel to stay with Red Bull. Not just for this season, but for next.

A Japanese has never won an F1 race

Almost 20 Japanese drivers have competed and none has won an F1 race. Japanese have reached the podium only three times in F1. And all were third-place finishes.

Aguri Suzuki was the first to reach the podium, finishing third in the 1990 Japanese GP.

Kamui Kobayashi was third in the 2012 Japanese Grand Prix driving with Sauber and has scored more points in F1 than any Japanese driver.

Takuma Sato managed a third in the 2004 U.S. Grand Prix. He is also a two-time winner of the Indianapolis 500.

Season so far

McLaren has won the first two races — Lando Norris in Australia and Oscar Piastri in China — in a field that looks tightly bunched.

Norris leads the driver standings with 44 points, followed by Verstappen with 36 and George Russell of Mercedes with 35. Piastri is one point back with 34.

Seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton, who joined Ferrari this season after departing Mercedes, has only nine points. He was 10th in Australia and was disqualified in China following postrace scrutineering. His best result so far is a win in the sprint race in China.

Hamilton has won five times in Japan, and his Ferrari team has vowed to fix the mistakes that saw Hamilton and teammate Charles Leclerc disqualified in China.