Red Bull Boss Confirms Investigation Into Yuki Tsunoda’s Italian GP Struggles

While Max Verstappen was winning the Italian Grand Prix, Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda was battling in the middle of the pack and dealing with a compromised car.

Tsunoda is under pressure to start scoring points regularly if he wants to save his seat at Red Bull.

During the race, Tsunoda made contact with Liam Lawson, the driver he replaced at Red Bull, resulting in a loss of performance.

Despite starting in a points-scoring position, he ended up finishing 13th.

After the race, team principal Laurent Mekies confirmed the damage and announced an investigation into the truth regarding Tsunoda’s backslide.

“He was compromised because we’ve seen the damage and we’ve seen the performance loss, so we knew the race was probably over at that moment,” Mekies told the media.

“Now the simple truth is that I have not reviewed the video yet, I spoke with Yuki at length but didn’t have a chance to review fully the video yet, so we will do that with Yuki and we’ll try to draw the right conclusions.”

Additionally, Mekies revealed that Tsunoda was driving an older spec car without the most recent floor upgrade.

“We had a floor upgrade only on Max’s car, we think it’s… There are no small updates anymore because everything is small anyway, so it’s a small update,” the Red Bull boss added.

“We are hoping to have it on both cars for the next race. And we think it worked okay, yeah.”

Down at Racing Bulls, Isack Hadjar is oozing with potential and delivering stellar performances consistently as he makes his case for a promotion.

He started the race from the pit lane, but brought home a point after making up several positions.

Tsunoda, meanwhile, is getting closer to Verstappen’s pace, but he is still falling short and failing to score points, putting the team at a disadvantage in the Constructors’ standings.

The RB-21 is a challenging car to get a handle on, and Tsunoda is far from the only one of Verstappen’s teammates to struggle; however, the team’s decision-makers are clearly pushing him to improve or risk losing his seat.

When asked about how this race plays into the bigger picture of the 2026 driver lineup, Mekies made it clear that it is hard to draw too much from Tsunoda’s performance.

“It’s very difficult to get anything out of today. First stint in traffic, second stint with a car damage,” he said.

“If I look back at the last couple of races, it’s quite similar. I think it is correct to say that we probably have more work to do on the race pace than on the qualifying pace with Yuki.

“But again, it’s also why we are giving ourselves a bit more time.”