Did Adrian Newey block Yuki Tsunoda's Red Bull promotion? Christian Horner addresses Helmut Marko's claim

Red Bull's Christian Horner has addressed questions after Helmet Marko had claimed that Adrian Newey had blocked Yuki Tsunoda's promotion by saying that the Aero wizard had nothing to do with the driver decision. The Austrian team shocked the F1 world when it announced that it was dropping its second driver after just two races.

Liam Lawson had joined Red Bull as Sergio Perez's replacement for the 2025 F1 season. His first two races were, however, not as impressive. Not only that, the two races saw the driver being very uncomfortable when it came to managing the car and being under the spotlight.

Liam Lawson was eventually dropped by Red Bull after just two races, and Yuki Tsunoda was picked as his replacement. The decision surprised a lot of people, primarily because the Austrian team had made the inverse choice at the end of last season and was now going back on its decision.

When talking about the decision to not pick Yuki Tsunoda, Helmut Marko had recently claimed that the Japanese driver's incident in 2022 with Pierre Gasly had rubbed Adrian Newey the wrong way, and with the aero wizard now not a part of the team anymore, it's not a concern. Talking to Sky Sports, Red Bull's Christian Horner has clarified that Newey had no input whatsoever in deciding who drove for the team in 2025. He said:

“Adrian wasn’t involved in drivers certainly for this year. I think from the comments I saw that Helmut was referring to an incident back in 2022 at Silverstone. Adrian had no input into our driver selection for this year.”

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What Helmut Marko had said about former Red Bull genius

Prior to the race weekend, Helmut Marko had been giving interviews to multiple outlets explaining why Red Bull had now made the call to go for Yuki Tsunoda but had not done so in the past.

In trying to explain the reasoning behind it, the veteran mentioned how Yuki Tsunoda has angered Adrian Newey in 2022. He told Kleine Zeitung,

"For a long time, Yuki had the image of not performing consistently and making silly mistakes here and there. That's what happened last year in Mexico, where the decisive phase for us began. With Lawson, it was the exact opposite at first: he came on and delivered straight away, no matter how great the pressure was. In retrospect, however, it wasn't the right decision."

He added:

"In general, however, a lot can be traced back to a single incident. At Silverstone, Tsunoda once drove into Pierre Gasly's car, and parts of the cars on the track damaged the underbody of Verstappen's car, which cost him the race. Adrian Newey was furious at the time. From that point on, Yuki was a red rag to him. But now Newey is gone, and Yuki has worked hard on himself."

It was surprising to see Marko bring Newey into the discussion, especially since he's not even a part of the team anymore. With that being said, it's great that the Red Bull boss, Christian Horner, has set the record straight in everything.