Yuki Tsunoda will not be on the 2026 Formula 1 grid. Red Bull has formally confirmed Isaac Hadjar as his replacement at the senior team, and with Liam Lawson retained at Racing Bulls alongside rookie Arvid Lindblad, no seat exists for Tsunoda inside the Red Bull structure. For a driver whose career has been inseparable from the Honda-Red Bull partnership since his Formula 2 days, it is the bluntest possible ending.
The harshness of the outcome is not what makes the story notable. The turning point — the single, avoidable qualifying lap that cost him the season — is.
Tsunoda was promoted to Red Bull just three races into 2025 after Lawson's brief cameo in the senior seat went badly. It was the chance Tsunoda had campaigned for through 2024 and been denied when Red Bull instead took Lawson. By his own admission, he returned for 2025 fitter, mentally sharper and more determined than he had ever been. The early results backed the talk. Tsunoda scored points in his opening races, was reasonably quick in qualifying and delivered more consistency than Lawson had managed at the senior team.
Then came qualifying at Imola in May. Red Bull had fitted the latest floor and bodywork specification to Tsunoda's car ahead of Q1. He went out as though the car was identical to what he had run in practice. At the second chicane the front end gripped harder than expected, the rear stepped out, and the Red Bull went into the wall at speed. The crash was silly, self-inflicted and unnecessary. It also proved to be the single defining moment of his season.
The psychological damage was one thing. For a month afterwards Tsunoda looked tentative, unwilling to commit fully to the apex on fast laps, constantly second-guessing the car's front end in quick corners. The practical damage was worse. Spare parts for the new specification were in short supply. Red Bull, understandably, grew reluctant to entrust the next upgrade to the same driver. For stretches of the season, Tsunoda was running behind Verstappen on car specification — and then being compared to him on the stopwatch.
The numbers closed the case. Tsunoda outqualified Verstappen once all year, at the Qatar sprint. He never looked like beating him across a full Grand Prix weekend. His average qualifying deficit remained uncomfortable, and the race pace followed suit. In fairness, every Verstappen teammate for the last five years has carried a deficit to the Dutchman that most paddock drivers would find unsustainable. But Red Bull is not a team that leaves its second seat in the hands of drivers who cannot close that gap meaningfully. Daniel Ricciardo knew that. Sergio Perez knew that. Tsunoda has joined the list.
There were good weekends. There were individual stints where Tsunoda looked more credible than either Lawson in the earlier part of 2025 or Perez in late 2024. But those were flashes, not trajectories. And the supply chain issue that followed Imola made it difficult for Tsunoda to build the kind of continuous run that might have forced a different decision.
Hadjar comes in as the new internal bet. Lawson, benefiting from Red Bull's reluctance to burn two juniors in one year, stays at Racing Bulls. Lindblad gets the chance Tsunoda was originally handed. The driver market, as ever in Milton Keynes, carries on without sentiment.
For Tsunoda, the next step is uncertain. Off the grid, out of contract, and still only 25, he has time — and the skills of a driver whose best weekends have been more than competitive. What he does not have is a car for 2026.
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*Originally published on [NewsFormula One](https://newsformula.one/article/tsunoda-off-2026-f1-grid-red-bull-imola-crash-hadjar-lawson-racing-bulls). Visit for full coverage.*
