The Red Bull second seat musical chairs seems to have become an unending saga. First, the team made the unpopular decision to promote the inexperienced Liam Lawson over Yuki Tsunoda, who had moved from strength to strength in the four seasons he had driven for Racing Bulls.
Red Bull decided to promote Lawson over Tsunoda by claiming that the New Zealander had more long-term potential than the Japanese driver. However, after just two races, Red Bull have claimed promoting Lawson was a mistake and have decided to swap him and Tsunoda.
And just when the team was preparing to lay the groundwork for Tsunoda’s debut at his home race, team advisor Helmut Marko dropped another bombshell. The 81-year-old dumped the blame of the delay in Tsunoda’s promotion on Red Bull’s former chief designer Adrian Newey.
“In general, a lot can be traced back to a single incident. At Silverstone [2022], 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,” Marko told Kleine Zeitung.
The claim, on the face of it, seems erroneous, as the Tsunoda-Gasly crash happened after Verstappen complained of body damage. The Dutchman, resultantly, lost the lead to Carlos Sainz and eventually finished the race in P7.
On top of this, Newey’s wife Amanda has come out and refuted Marko’s theory. Reacting to Marko’s comment on X (formerly Twitter), she wrote, “That doesn’t make sense. He was on garden leave.”
— Junaid #JB17 (@JunaidSamodien_) April 2, 2025
Newey’s gardening leave, as disclosed by his former manager Eddie Jordan on his podcast, Formula For Success, started on September 6, 2024. The 66-year-old remained on gardening leave until he joined Aston Martin on March 3, 2025.
This clearly establishes that Newey had pulled away from his duties at Red Bull way before the team would have started the discussions on who to promote and replace Sergio Perez. In fact, by that time, the Milton Keynes top brass hadn’t even decided to sack the Mexican.
