Red Bull’s F1 juniors: Where are they now?

While it’s easy to be cynical about the up-or-out nature of Red Bull’s young driver programme and the scars its abruptness has often left, no other enterprise has done more to promote young talent in motorsport.

To assemble an exhaustive where-are-they now on paper of everyone who has been through the system would require something akin to the size of a telephone directory – if such things existed any more. So we’ve passed over those who never made it to F1 but succeeded elsewhere – the likes of Neel Jani, Antonio Felix da Costa, Filipe Albuquerque, Philipp Eng, Alex Lynn, Robert Wickens, and Callum Ilott.

We’ve also omitted those who were but briefly part of Red Bull’s orbit – a list which includes 2025 Alpine F1 driver Jack Doohan, along with Sky F1 pundit and friend of Autosport Karun Chandhok…

Enrique Bernoldi

F1 2001-2002

Enrique Bernoldi

Photo by: James Bearne

You may not believe in the existence of a parallel universe in which Enrique Bernoldi was a world championship contender, but Dr Helmut Marko clearly did. Six seasons into a title-sponsorship arrangement with Red Bull, Sauber turned down Bernoldi for 2001 in favour of a young Finn who was the veteran of just 23 car races. A hissy fit ensued and Red Bull’s schilling was transferred to the struggling Arrows team, where Bernoldi partnered Jos Verstappen.

This inconvenienced Sauber not one jot since the Finn in question, Kimi Raikkonen, made such an impression that McLaren and Mercedes bought out his contract at the end of the season. Sauber was so flush it could afford to build a new wind tunnel.

Despite signing a three-year deal, Bernoldi became a gentleman of leisure within 18 months as Arrows ran short of funds, culminating in the absurd scene at the French Grand Prix of both its drivers completing just one slow timed lap in qualifying – a contractual box-ticking exercise to show it was still participating in the championship. No more money entered the coffers and Arrows was never seen again although its motorhome, factory and cars would enjoy second lives in different colours.

Bernoldi was briefly tipped to join Jordan the following season as Red Bull magnate Dietrich Mateschitz entered negotiations to buy the team, but when that deal fell through Bernoldi was consigned to marking time in such as World Series By Nissan before he was dropped by Red Bull. A three-year test-driving gig with BAR-Honda led nowhere in F1 and he headed to GTs and his native Brazilian Stock Cars via a brief dalliance with IndyCar.

Christian Klien

F1 2004-2006, 2010

Christian Klien leads David Coulthard

Photo by: Mark Capilitan

A young Austrian talent naturally generated excitement within the corridors of Red Bull HQ in Fuschl am See, the bucolic lakeside town east of Salzburg, and, since Enrique Bernoldi was failing to make a splash in F1, Klien was fast-tracked through the junior formulae. He arrived in F1 in 2004 with but a smattering of race wins and one championship title, in German Formula Renault.

Klien was partnered with Mark Webber at Jaguar Racing in the dog days of a team whose parent company was dying to rid itself of the whole shoddy enterprise. The wretched R5 car was good for only 10 points that season, just three of which were scored by Klien in a Belgian GP where just 11 cars finished and Klien hit David Coulthard while defending his position.

That November, Red Bull acquired Jaguar Racing’s assets for the nominal figure of £1.

In a scenario that would become familiar to many Red Bull juniors in future years, Klien was already ‘on watch’ through 2005, sharing the second seat alongside team leader Coulthard – awkward, given the events of Belgium ’04 – with another Red Bull protégé, Vitantonio Liuzzi. The RB1 car, a carry-over from Jaguar, was workmanlike at best but Klien did enough to warrant being kept in the car for the remainder of the season after a four-race handover to Liuzzi early on.

Against widespread expectations Klien was retained for 2006. The Ferrari-powered RB2 was woeful – incoming technical director Adrian Newey ran an eye over it, shuddered with revulsion, and retreated to his drawing board – and speculation mounted through the season that Klien was to be replaced; his response was to riposte that it was Coulthard, not he, who was under threat.

It must, therefore, have come as a surprise when, after the Italian GP, Klien was presented with the choice of a funded Champ Car drive or the exit door. He chose the latter and was replaced by test driver Robert Doornbos for a reported €15million.

It was an expensive three-race cameo since Doornbos’s sponsor, Harry Muermans, later pursued him through the courts, claiming the money was a loan rather than sponsorship. Klien gamely soldiered on in a holding pattern through three seasons of test-driving jobs in F1 before contesting three rounds in 2010 with the moribund Hispania outfit. GTs and WEC then beckoned.

Patrick Friesacher

F1 2005

Patrick Friesacher, Red Bull Racing

Attend a track day at the Red Bull Ring and you may be lucky enough to get the personable Patrick Friesacher as an instructor. He is an outlier in this list since he was dropped from the Red Bull Junior Team before reaching F1 but later rejoined the family – if not as one of its F1 hopefuls.

Friesacher graduated to F3000, F1’s support category at the time, in 2001 with Helmut Marko’s team but, after three seasons with just one win to his name, he was offered Formula Nippon or out at the end of 2003. He found his own sponsors to continue in F3000 the following season and started 11 grands prix with Minardi in 2005 before his money ran out and he was replaced by Robert Doornbos.

A back injury during an A1GP test ended his single-seater career but he made a brief return to the cockpit in the American Le Mans Series in 2008, and is a frequent sight on Red Bull demo runs alongside his work at the Austrian circuit.

Vitantonio Liuzzi

Vitantonio Liuzzi leads Scott Speed, Scuderia Toro Rosso STR01-Cosworth

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

F1 2005-2011

One of those baffling talents who shone brightly in junior series only to flounder when they reached the top table, Vitantonio Liuzzi was backed by Red Bull through F3000, which he dominated during a 2004 season with Christian Horner’s Arden team, winning seven of the 10 races and only finishing off the podium once.

By this point Liuzzi had already been talent-spotted by Williams. Late in 2001, aged 19, Liuzzi had beaten no less an eminence than Michael Schumacher by almost a minute in a kart race at Schumacher’s home track in Kerpen. Among the 5000-strong crowd was Jonathan Williams, son of Frank, and a year later Liuzzi found himself testing a Williams F1 car after winning the karting world championship.

A four-race cameo for Red Bull in 2005 presaged a full-time seat for 2006 when the soft drinks empire absorbed the ailing Minardi team and rebranded it Scuderia Toro Rosso. There he carved out a reputation for being fast but prone to mistakes; cynics observed that he would fare better if he spent less time choosing fashionable clothes and stopped trying to drive an F1 car like a go-kart.

In strutting around the paddock in his glad rags, though, Liuzzi was only obeying orders from above to reflect Red Bull’s hard-partying image. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Dr Marko’s finger soon began to hover over the trigger and Liuzzi found himself in the position of being wrong all the time, as evinced at Monaco when he was castigated for shunting at Massenet when in fact he’d been nudged off by David Coulthard.

By mid-2007 there was talk that either Liuzzi or team-mate Scott Speed – or both – were imminently to be replaced. This came to pass as Champ Car champion Sebastien Bourdais was announced as one of the 2008 line-up that August and Speed was ejected in favour of Sebastian Vettel.

After 18 months out of F1 Liuzzi returned in late 2009, taking Giancarlo Fisichella’s Force India seat when Fisi took over from the benighted Luca Badoer at Ferrari. At the beginning of the 2011 season he was tipped as a possible replacement for the injured Robert Kubica at Renault but lost out to Nick Heidfeld; consigned to the walking-dead Hispania outfit, he vanished from F1 at the end of the year, contesting six more seasons in an eclectic collection of other categories.

He has subsequently acted as an FIA driver steward.

Scott Speed

Scott Speed, Toro Rosso STR02-Ferrari

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

F1 2006-2007

Among the more obscure and forgotten threads of F1 history, hidden in the shadows of Red Bull Racing’s success, is that before he bought Jaguar Racing, Dietrich Mateschitz’s original plan was to set up an explicitly American team – preferably with a US-born driver – the better to sell caffeinated fizzy pop in a growth market it had only entered in the mid-1990s.

As part of this, Mateschitz and Indy 500 winner – and sometime F1 driver – Danny Sullivan launched the ‘Red Bull Driver Search’ programme in which talent scouts scoured the US single-seater racing scene. Scott Speed (along with future IndyCar stars AJ Allmendinger and Ryan Hunter-Reay, and Le Mans class winner Joey Hand) registered a prominent ping on the radar.

Red Bull funded a drive in the British F3 championship for 2003 but Speed’s season was disrupted when he developed ulcerative colitis, an unpleasant and incurable condition which would inconvenience him for the rest of his career.

Nevertheless, and despite Red Bull abandoning plans to wave the Stars & Stripes, Speed acquitted himself well enough to rise through GP2 and beat Neel Jani to the Scuderia Toro Rosso seat alongside Vitantonio Liuzzi for 2006. Running in a team with little prospect of finishing in the top 10, let alone winning races, sapped Speed’s enthusiasm and he would later admit that his motivation – and public demeanour – suffered.

The most obvious sign of the simmering rancour came at the 2007 European Grand Prix when both Toro Rosso drivers were among the many spinners into the gravel during the downpour that stopped the race. Afterwards Speed and team principal Franz Tost came to blows in the pitlane, an exchange partially caught on TV.

Afterwards Speed told team co-owner Gerhard Berger that if Tost “ever touches me again, I’ll knock him out”. Regrettably for the viewing figures, perhaps, there would be no televised rematch – Speed was dropped in favour of Sebastian Vettel from the next round onwards.

While Vettel was very much the coming man in Red Bull’s F1 vision, Mateschitz stepped in and arranged for Speed to be supported through the NASCAR ladder. That ended in 2010 when Speed was dropped shortly after agreeing a three-year contract extension, although this altercation was conducted within the relative decorum of the courts.

Since then Speed has raced in rallycross, barring a brief four-race appearance in the first Formula E season.

Sebastian Vettel

Race winner Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull Racing in parc ferme

Photo by: Daniel Kalisz

F1 2007-2022

The Red Bull driver ladder’s first and biggest win until Max Verstappen came along – and the company was much more involved in the early stages of Vettel’s career, having talent-spotted him in karting. Vettel won the Formula BMW ADAC championship in 2005, was second to Paul di Resta in Euro F3 the following season while acting as BMW Sauber’s test driver in F1, and was leading the Formula Renault 3.5 championship in 2007 when he was called up as temporary replacement for the injured Robert Kubica at the US GP.

There he caught the eye by becoming the youngest-ever driver to score a point, which led to him being fast-tracked to Toro Rosso, when Scott Speed was cast out three races later. There, the following year, armed with a car which was the effective clone of the Adrian Newey-designed Red Bull RB4, he won the Italian Grand Prix from pole position on what was a grotesquely wet and challenging weekend.

Promoted to the senior team for 2009, he won four consecutive titles from 2010-13 and broke several records, including Alberto Ascari’s winning streak. Blown off for the most part by new team-mate Daniel Ricciardo in 2014, a season marred by an unreliable Renault hybrid power unit, Vettel moved to Ferrari where he enjoyed several successful years before experiencing what can best be described as a meltdown in 2019, when he was pushed hard by newcomer Charles Leclerc.

Dropped by phone call during the 2020 COVID lockdown, Vettel moved to Aston Martin, where his newly discovered passion for eco-activism rubbed team owner Lawrence Stroll up the wrong way. Without tangible results he was given the heave-ho and retired at the end of 2022.

Sebastien Buemi

Sebastien Buemi, Toro Rosso STR5 Ferrari

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

F1 2009-2011

Swiss-born Sebastien Buemi was technically behind Michael Ammermueller in the Red Bull queue but leapfrogged him after standing in successfully when the German suffered a broken scaphoid bone in the opening round of the 2007 GP2 season. Ammermueller returned to the cockpit for Magny-Cours and Silverstone but failed to score and was then ‘rested’ until the end of the season, after which he was ejected from the programme.

Buemi became Toro Rosso’s F1 test driver in 2008 and was promoted to a race seat the following season when Sebastian Vettel was elevated to the senior squad. He outqualified his new team-mate – the already-under-pressure Sebastien Bourdais – and scored points in the opening round, but seventh in Melbourne would be his equal-best result all year.

Few results of note eventuated through 2010 and ’11, although Buemi achieved ‘meme’ status when his front uprights underwent ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’ during the 2010 Chinese Grand Prix. Having completed three seasons without convincing Helmut Marko he was worthy of further promotion, Buemi was retained only as test and reserve driver thereafter, dovetailing this with Formula E and a successful stint in sportscars with Toyota in WEC, which he won in 2014, ’22 and ’23, along with four Le Mans victories.

Jaime Alguersuari, Toro Rosso, with Sergio Perez, Sauber

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

F1 2009-2011

After winning the British F3 championship in 2008 (beating Sergio Perez, Oliver Turvey and Brendon Hartley), Alguersuari took a while to get into his stride in Formula Renault 3.5 the following season. No matter, though, for Helmut Marko was in axe-swinging mode, removing Brendon Hartley from Toro Rosso test driving duties mid-season and then relieving Sebastien Bourdais of his race seat.

Alguersuari, therefore, had barely added ‘F1 test driver’ to his Twitter bio when, at the age of 19 years, four months and three days, he became the youngest-ever F1 race driver at the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix. He scored no points that season and just five the following year; and, while 2011’s statistics read better (26 points), it wasn’t enough and both Alguersuari and team-mate Sebastien Buemi were dropped from the line-up.

He returned to karting briefly before reappearing in Formula E, only to abruptly call time on his racing career in 2015. Since then he has focused on music, a longtime parallel occupation in which he goes under the name DJ Squire.

Having returned to the karting scene in 2021, Alguersuari has also spoken out (to El Confidencial, a Spanish media outlet) about what he regards as the “trauma” of his F1 years, though he concedes he was “full of ego and prickly”.

“I have done therapy. When I retired several psychologists helped me. Now, even so, strange things come into my head. And sometimes wake up, like, crying, having dreamed of having done a great lap only to see the face of Mr Marko, angry.”

Daniel Ricciardo

Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull Racing, 2nd Position, on the podium with his trophy and champagne

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

F1 2011-2024

“Having a hungry youngster on the books will keep our current driver pairing nice and sharp.” With these words, announcing the arrival of Daniel Ricciardo as Toro Rosso test driver in 2011, Helmut Marko began tolling the bell for the F1 careers of Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari.

Picked up by Red Bull for 2008 and placed in Formula Renault Eurocup, which he won convincingly, Ricciardo won British F3 in ’09 and was a runner-up in Formula Renault 3.5 the following year. These are precisely the kind of marks a Red Bull junior must tick to progress.

Midway through 2011 Ricciardo got race seat time as Red Bull paid for him to replace Narain Karthikeyan at HRT, an obvious prologue to him racing for Toro Rosso in 2012. Despite a middling couple of years where doubts hovered over whether he was enjoying the lifestyle too much, Ricciardo got the nod over Jean-Eric Vergne to replace Mark Webber in Red Bull Racing for 2014.

There he very much exceeded expectations, winning three races and finishing third in the championship in an underpowered, unreliable RB10, one of the least impressive cars to emerge on Adrian Newey’s technical watch. He also contrived to make his four-time world champion team-mate, Sebastian Vettel, look rather ordinary.

In 2015 he had the better of new team-mate Daniil Kvyat, less so the man who replaced him in 2016 – Max Verstappen. Rancour built, Ricciardo felt he wasn’t being given equal treatment, and he left to join Renault in 2019.

Observers felt he was simply cashing out by going to a team with such little competitive hope. But, while Ricciardo’s brand was viewed as a diminishing one in racing circles, a new Netflix show depicting a largely fictionalised version of F1 enabled his bright, brash personality to gain traction as the audience grew.

Still, a subsequent move to McLaren netted just one win and he was ousted in favour of fellow countryman Oscar Piastri for 2023. A brief reappearance in Red Bull’s second-string team, renamed AlphaTauri and then RB, dangled the potential of a top-team comeback as the organisation’s young-talent pipeline spluttered.

But it was not to be and he is now a man of leisure.

Jean-Eric Vergne

Jean-Eric Vergne, Toro Rosso STR8

Photo by: Motorsport Images

F1 2012-2014

British F3 champion in 2010, runner-up to fellow Red Bull protégé Robert Wickens in Formula Renault 3.5 in 2011, Jean-Eric Vergne got an extra boost through the ranks when Brendon Hartley was dropped from the junior team during 2010.

Like other young drivers rapidly promoted through the ranks by Red Bull into an uncompetitive F1 car – the 2012 STR was a stinker – he struggled for motivation.

“When you’re a driver used to winning everything in all the other categories,” he told Autosport after being fined €25,000 for a needless shunt at the European GP in 2012, “even if you know you’re coming to F1 and that you might not win, that you won’t get podiums or even that it will be difficult to score points, when you’re at the back of the grid – or if you make a good race and you finish it quite far off – it’s of course a little bit difficult for me.”

After completing the seemingly statutory three years at Toro Rosso without warranting promotion – the younger Daniil Kvyat went to Red Bull in Sebastian Vettel’s place for 2015 instead – Vergne was dropped. A test driving and sim jockey role at Ferrari helped him keep his hand in for a couple of years but led to nothing in F1.

In Formula E, though, Vergne found his metier, winning the championship twice alongside a selection of endurance racing gigs in WEC and ELMS.

Daniil Kvyat

Daniil Kvyat, Red Bull Racing, second place

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

F1 2014- 2020

Another multiple karting champion who adapted rapidly to single-seaters – winning Formula Renault 2.0 Alps and the GP3 Series in 2012-13 – was among that generation of drivers in the 2010s who made it to F1 before their 20th birthdays. Making his F1 debut in 2014 presented him with challenges from the off, since the difficulty in packaging the new hybrid-powered cars to the weight limit forced many drivers to shed pounds to stay competitive – and the tall, gangly Kvyat had little room to manoeuvre in that regard.

He acquitted himself well enough to earn promotion to the senior team in 2015 but a series of high-profile accidents under pressure earned him the nickname “the torpedo”. After crashing into Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari twice in his home grand prix, Kvyat was demoted back to Toro Rosso ahead of the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix.

“The crash in Sochi is a consequence of the internal pressure, which he has built himself, it did not come from us,” explained Helmut Marko.

His replacement, Max Verstappen, won that very race. Kvyat’s career never really recovered from this wobble and he was replaced by Pierre Gasly late in 2017.

After a year on the sidelines as Ferrari’s sim jockey, Kvyat was recalled to Toro Rosso unexpectedly in 2019 when Gasly replaced the Renault-bound Daniel Ricciardo. New team-mate Alex Albon was then picked in preference to Kvyat when Gasly was ejected late in the season.

At the end of 2020 Kvyat was ushered out in favour of Yuki Tsunoda and has plied his trade in WEC since, along with a couple of dalliances in US racing.

Max Verstappen

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, 1st position, celebrates on the podium

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

F1 2015-present

Red Bull can hardly be said to have supported Max Verstappen from the earliest stages of his career as it has with other drivers – it swooped in to beat Mercedes’ Toto Wolff in a bidding war midway through the youngster’s F3 season in 2014 – but it has been determined to keep him.

At the time, Red Bull’s F1 campaign was in disarray while Mercedes was utterly dominant. But Helmut Marko was able to offer something Wolff couldn’t: a fast track to F1.

Within days of signing up to Red Bull, Verstappen was announced as Toro Rosso’s test driver – and the race seat followed. Max did his bit by excelling, while behind the scenes ‘Team Verstappen’ always ensured its man got priority in all business.

This hasn’t always led to harmonious relationships with team-mates, but then again neither has Max’s habit of destroying them on track.

In case you’ve been in a coma for the past decade, Max is now defending his fourth world championship.

Carlos Sainz Jr., Scuderia Toro Rosso STR11

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

F1 2015-present

Signed to Red Bull’s young-driver programme since his early Formula BMW days in 2010, Sainz was elevated to F1 with Toro Rosso alongside Max Verstappen in 2015 after winning the Formula Renault 3.5 championship. Two drivers with highly competitive racer fathers in attendance was never going to make for harmonious relations, and the Sainz family soon became discombobulated by what they believed to be the preferential treatment given to Max.

There was fury, too, when Max was promoted to Red Bull’s senior team early in 2016 and Carlos was left in a holding pattern.

By mid-2017 Sainz was publicly highlighting the fact that for most Toro Rosso drivers it was three-seasons-then-out. He then took the decision out of Red Bull’s hands by signing for Renault and leaving.

He did just one full season with Renault before leaving for McLaren, but it was during a four-season stint at Ferrari that he finally became a grand prix winner.

Brendon Hartley

Brendon Hartley, Scuderia Toro Rosso and Pierre Gasly, Scuderia Toro Rosso prepare for the end of year grid photo

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

F1 2017-2018

New Zealander Brendon Hartley’s Red Bull career is a peculiar saga. Aged 15, having won the Toyota Racing Series, he and his father managed to get hold of Helmut Marko’s email address and pitched him for sponsorship. Hartley’s enormous mop of blond hair and ‘sk8r boi’ style made him a perfect fit for Red Bull.

Europe beckoned and Hartley initially rewarded Red Bull’s faith by showing well in Formula Renault 2.0 and British F3, only to completely lose momentum in Formula Renault 3.5 in 2009 and 2010. The pressure of racing in both FR 3.5 and Euro F3, while attending grands prix as Toro Rosso’s test driver, became too much.

Ejected from the Red Bull programme, Hartley rebuilt his trajectory in sportscars – plus a simulator role with Mercedes – and won Le Mans twice with Porsche. Come 2017, when Porsche announced its withdrawal from the WEC, Hartley felt the time was right to try F1 again – and Marko not only took the phone call, he said yes.

Granted, Red Bull/Toro Rosso’s options for 2018 were a little thin given Carlos Sainz’s unexpected departure. Hartley replaced Sainz for the last four rounds of 2017 and had a full season in 2018 but he never looked comfortable in the car and was outscored by team-mate Pierre Gasly.

That was it for Hartley in Formula 1 but three more Le Mans victories – with Toyota – lay in his future. He’s now racing a Wayne Taylor-run Cadillac in IMSA.

Pierre Gasly

Pierre Gasly, Red Bull Racing RB15

Photo by: Jerry Andre / Motorsport Images

F1 2017-present

Another driver arguably promoted too soon, Pierre Gasly was already a Formula Renault 2.0 champion when he joined the Red Bull family at the age of 18 and finished runner-up to Carlos Sainz in the 2014 FR 3.5 championship. The GP2 title followed in 2016 but, with no F1 seat immediately in the offing, Red Bull placed him in Super Formula for 2017.

Gasly was well in the running to win that championship when Red Bull had one of its summer pivots and decided to drop Daniil Kvyat from Toro Rosso – to the extent that Kvyat was briefly invited back for the US round while Gasly went back to Japan.

Daniel Ricciardo’s sudden departure for Renault at the end of 2018 created a vacancy in the top team but Gasly struggled with the pressure and found the car a handful. He was demoted back to the junior team before the end of 2019 in rather cruel circumstances – during his first week back at Toro Rosso, in Belgium, his childhood friend Anthoine Hubert was killed during the F2 feature race.

Although Gasly seized the moment to take a surprise (but thoroughly deserved) win at the Italian GP in 2020, it became increasingly clear to him that he wasn’t in contention for any future vacancies at Red Bull Racing, so he departed for Alpine at the end of 2022.

Alex Albon

Alexander Albon, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Andrew Hone / Motorsport Images

F1 2019-present

Few drivers epitomise the often capricious nature of Red Bull’s junior driver programme than Alex Albon. He was only on it briefly – after achieving respectable results in karts he joined the scheme in 2012, his first year in car racing, only to struggle in Formula Renault 2.0 Alps and Eurocup FR2.0.

At the end of that season he received the call from Dr Marko that he was no longer part of the programme. Aged just 18, he was going to have to make it some other way.

Remarkably, he did, eventually making it to F2 where he was part of the famous ‘Class of 2018’, finishing third behind George Russell and Lando Norris. Since Toro Rosso was short of talent and the Red Bull driver pipeline seemingly airlocked, as detailed above, Albon’s phone duly buzzed to announce an incoming call from Marko – shortly after Alex had signed to race in Formula E.

Albon decided against the world of glorified milk floats and grabbed his F1 opportunity, but it was to be a bruising experience – promoted to the top team as Pierre Gasly was sent the other way, then demoted to test driver at the end of 2020 when Red Bull decided a more experienced candidate with a tougher hide was the answer to its problem of finding a partner for Max Verstappen.

He was also given a drive in the DTM but, at the end of 2021, reached an arrangement in which he could race for Williams in F1 while retaining publicly unspecified ties to Red Bull.

Yuki Tsunoda

Yuki Tsunoda, Visa Cash App RB F1 Team

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

F1 2021-present

Honda’s tie-up with Red Bull, announced in mid-2018, made it politically expedient to add a Japanese driver to the Red Bull young driver programme, and Yuki Tsunoda was the obvious candidate. This furnished his progress from Japanese F4 to FIA F3 for the 2019 season and, despite an occasionally frustrating 2020 F2 season in which he ultimately finished third, he was promoted to AlphaTauri for 2021.

Helmut Marko supposedly remains a fan but Tsunoda’s cause hasn’t been helped by questions over his fitness, consistency and temperament. He’s worked on them but not, it seems, enough to merit being moved up in the world.

After an unprecedented fourth season in Red Bull’s second team he was leapfrogged for promotion by Liam Lawson. Given Honda will no longer be the team’s engine partner from the end of this season, it’s make-or-break time.