'Decision Made Months Ago': Impossible For Tsunoda To Negotiate With Red Bull
F1Sunday, 22 December 2024 at 10:46
Yuki Tsunoda's manager, Mario Miyakawa, hinted that the Japanese driver really had no chance of singing with the A team.
On December 19th, one day after Sergio Perez announced he would be taking a break from racing, Red Bull confirmed the driver that would replace him would be Liam Lawson.
This decision outraged some F1 fans, who believe Yuki Tsunoda should have been promoted, as available statistics show he's the better driver.
The Japanese F1 driver outperformed his teammate in every head-to-head category. Yet, Red Bull decided to promote the much less experienced Liam Lawson, who had only 11 race weekends under his belt.
Red Bull's team principal, Christian Horner, explained why he promoted Lawson instead of Tsunoda in one of his interviews. His reasoning went as follows.
Although the 24-year-old beat Lawson 6-0 in qualifying, the actual time delta between them was much smaller. According to team data, Lawson was even a bit better in terms of race pace.
On top of that, the team took into consideration Lawson's resilience, mental toughness, and versatility. The New Zealander competed in different series, from Super Formula to DTM, and won races in every single one.
Additionally, Red Bull felt that Lawson had more potential, given that he had participated in 11 Grand Prix weekends and could already match Tsunoda's race pace.
Tsunoda's manager hints decision was made a long time ago
While Red Bull gave a few decent reasons for choosing the less experienced driver, Yuki Tsunoda's manager, Mario Miyakawa, suggested on his Instagram that it was "impossible" to negotiate with the Milton Keynes team.
Apparently, the decision of who would be the driver to take over Perez's seat was made months before the announcement, and the 24-year-old driver had no chance.
Miyakawa posted a picture of Lawson and Tsunoda on his social media, asking "Who's next?" to which one of his followers responded:
"I really don't understand why a manager is acting like an outsider watching a show?"
Responding to this question, Miyakawa hinted that he couldn't do anything else for his F1 driver, as it was apparently impossible to negotiate with Red Bull.
"I understand what you say but the negotiations are impossible when a decision was made months ago 🥲."
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