Juan Pablo Montoya claims neither Liam Lawson nor Yuki Tsunoda should have been picked as Max Verstappen's teammate at Red Bull

Former F1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya claimed he would not have picked either Liam Lawson or Yuki Tsunoda as Max Verstappen's teammate for the 2025 season. After Lawson's disappointing performance in the first two races, the Austrian team recently announced that they had demoted the Kiwi to the Visa Cash App Racing Bulls team for the remainder of the 2025 season.

The 23-year-old, who had replaced Sergio Perez at the end of the 2024 season, had just 11-race experience before signing with the Milton-Keynes outfit. However, he failed to impress Red Bull with his performances, as he languished at the back of the grid in Australia and China.

Ahead of the Japanese GP, the former world champions announced that Yuki Tsunoda would replace Liam Lawson for the remainder of the 2025 season and race alongside Max Verstappen.

In his interview with Vision4Sport, former McLaren driver Juan Pablo Montoya believed that Red Bull should have put Isack Hadjar in the second seat, not Yuki Tsunoda, saying:

“I would have put Isack Hadjar in the Red Bull, more than Yuki Tsunoda. He would have been my choice. If I was Red Bull, I would have stated publicly that they were signing Hadjar for two years and guaranteed him the seat without question whatever happens."

“We don’t know what the deal is with Yuki. One year? Two years? I think it's for the whole season. Choosing Tsunoda now is an admission they got it wrong last year,” he added.

Isack Hadjar had been competitive in the first two races of the year against Yuki Tsunoda and even out-qualified him in China.

Yuki Tsunoda gives his honest opinion of RB21's handling issues

Red Bull driver Yuki Tsunoda stated that he did not find the RB21 "challenging to drive" after completing two days in the simulator ahead of his debut with the Austrian team in Suzuka this weekend.

Speaking at a Honda event at the company’s Aoyama headquarters, the 24-year-old reflected:

“I spent about two days in the simulator [with the 2025 car]. From that experience, I didn’t find the car to be that challenging to drive. I definitely got the impression that the front end is very responsive, as people often say," he said.

"But if you ask whether it felt tricky to handle, I wouldn’t say it gave me a particularly strange feeling, at least in the simulator. Of course, how I want to set up the car is probably different from Max's. I want to develop my own car setup, get a good understanding of it, and gradually get up to speed from FP1,” he added.

The Japanese driver had spent four years on the junior team and had earlier been looked over by Red Bull on several occasions before getting a call-up post-China.