"You could give Liam Lawson 100 years, and he still wouldn’t be as fast as Yuki Tsunoda," claims former Red Bull man

Former AlphaTauri team boss Franz Tost asserted Yuki Tsunoda to be a faster driver than Liam Lawson. The pair raced under Tost's reigns in the 2023 season, and the Austrian got to know a lot about the two in the five races the pair competed against each other in that year.

Lawson did not have a full-time F1 seat till last year. The 23-year-old's long-eluded F1 dream had resulted in a few substitute appearances for an injured Daniel Ricciardo but nothing more than that.

This changed after the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix, when the Aussie driver was sacked by the team to bring the New Zealander into the stable. He then seemingly auditioned for the 2025 Red Bull seat and gave Horner & Co. enough reasons to snub Yuki Tsunoda and give him the call-up to the senior team.

However, this decision did not stand the test of time, as after just two races, Liam Lawson was swapped with Tsunoda at the senior team due to the former driver's torrid few weekends as a Red Bull driver. While Tsunoda has finally gotten the job, Franz Tost argued that such a situation should not have arisen in the first place, as he said (via ORF):

"I would have done with Yuki Tsunoda from the start. I said that already, I made it clear last Autumn. Why? Yuki is much faster than Lawson.You could give Lawson 100 years, and he still wouldn’t be as fast as Yuki – and Yuki is more experienced. So what’s the issue? It’s a very simple decision."

With Tsunoda and Lawson swapping places, the two will require some time to get a grasp on their new machinery.

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How was Yuki Tsunoda's first day as a Red Bull Racing F1 driver?

Yuki Tsunoda at the F1 Grand Prix Of Japan - Practice - Source: Getty

Though the Kiwi earned a demotion, all the eyes were set on Yuki Tsunoda's debut with Red Bull as he became the incumbent of the 'cursed' seat at the Milton Keynes-based squad. Despite the early skepticism and a few oversteery moments in FP1, the Japanese driver finished the session in P6, a tenth behind Max Verstappen.

On the other hand, he was unable to set a respectable lap time during FP2 as the session was interrupted by four red flags. Anyhow, his first day as a Red Bull driver was a commendable one, as he said (via Formula 1):

"FP1 was better than expected. A good start for myself. FP2, I didn’t set a lap time. I think there is still a lot of work to do. Maybe I slightly struggled or there is something we have to look at more in the data from FP2 but so far, overall, it’s ok. I just have to build up the confidence a bit more."

However, the main metric where Tsunoda will be measured is race performance, where he needs to be better than his predecessor to assure his status within the Red Bull stable.