Christian Horner speaks on why Yuki Tsunoda hasn’t had a Red Bull F1 test, as he adds on Isack Hadjar and even Arvid Lindblad.
With Sergio Perez not finding his form back, the rumours about him losing his Red Bull drive has surfaced again. The Mexican has just scored the 15 points in the last six rounds despite having secured a fresh new contract to remain with them for two more seasons.
Amid names like Daniel Ricciardo and Liam Lawson doing the rounds, Visa Cash App RB’s Tsunoda’s name is never linked to the Red Bull seat. So much so, that the Japanese driver is yet to even have a test drive with senior team thus far.
Horner wasn’t too concerned about no test for Tsunoda but didn’t rule it out for future. The query comes at a time when Lawson has tested with Red Bull, which was seemingly already planned months before and has nothing to do with Perez’s situation.
“Yuki is a Red Bull Racing driver, he’s on a Red Bull Racing contract and we re-signed him because he has been performing well, so we’re very aware of his performances,” said Horner, when asked as to why there is no test for Tsunoda from Red Bull yet. “You never know. Maybe he’ll get a test one day. You never know.
“Yuki is doing a good job. Yuki scored another point today and he is stringing weekends together and he is doing a good job. Yuki has benefited from having Daniel alongside him. Yuki has learned from Daniel in terms of having an experienced driver and how they interact with the team and the engineers. Yuki is not a rookie any more.
“Yuki has a lot of experience under his belt and you can see he is putting that to good use. In difficult conditions like Silverstone, Yuki drove a very good race. You can never rule anything out [about Tsunoda driving for Red Bull]. Yuki, we have multiple options for years on him because we believe that he is a talent,” summed up Horner.
Another couple of Red Bull juniors who have put their name in the hat are F2 racer Hadjar and F3’s Lindblad. While the former did have his FP1 outing in Silverstone and took the points lead in the junior championship, the latter has won four consecutive races as well.
They have time still to get into F1 and Horner has surprisingly has not totally turned down Hadjar as one of the drivers. “Isack is doing a good job, he had a good weekend, good to see both Isack and Arvid Lindblad win the Formula 3 race,” he said. “Two outstanding talents that are coming through.
“Again, he is making a strong case for himself next year which is why we are not in any rush to finalise seats in the system team. [so he has a chance?] There’s always a chance,” summed up Horner.
Here’s Yuki Tsunoda on points in British GP
Here’s Christian Horner on Sergio Perez situation
Here’s Max Verstappen, Christian Horner on recovering to P2
Here’s link to a F1 Discord channel, join in to interact
