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The second-last weekend of the 2025 season has kicked off, and one driver has garnered some attention during the Friday practice and Sprint Qualifying of the Qatar Grand Prix.
Yuki Tsunoda has closed the gap to his teammate and defending Drivers’ Champion, Max Verstappen, showing great pace in both sessions on the first day of cars on track. Throughout the SQ1 and SQ2 of Sprint Qualifying, he consistently kept to the top of the timing tower, making it into the final round of a qualifying session for the first time in six race weekends.
In the end, Tsunoda qualified in P5. This is his best starting position all season. And most notably, it is the first time that he will be starting ahead of Verstappen. This is the first time since the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix that Verstappen has been unqualified by a teammate.
Tsunoda has been under the microscope for much of the latter half of this year, as sister teams Red Bull and VCARB have taken their time in deciding their line-ups for 2026. This is the kind of performance that would certainly play in Tsunoda’s favor, however, it comes at a moment that might be just a bit too late.
While it was initially thought that Red Bull would reveal their line-up for next year following the Mexico Grand Prix, they decided to hold back and take more time to evaluate their options. And it looks like F1 fans may get their answer to one of the biggest questions in the sport right now.
Red Bull CEO Peter Bayer told Sky DE, "The decision has to be made. Laurent Mekies, I think, has already announced that we would like to make a decision after Qatar.”
We’ve gotten a few more clues as to what sort of announcement we can expect towards the end of this weekend, with Hadjar confirming that he will be on the grid in 2026, but not which team he will drive for.
As for Tsunoda? He also gave us a clue about his future.
“I know something that I can’t share obviously with you guys,” he said to the media earlier in the day, “but probably most people know it… I’m in a similar understanding with you guys… I don’t know what’s going to happen, so let’s see."
What this precisely means is unclear, however it indicates that the Red Bull organization has made up their mind, at least to some degree, in their driver pairings. It is also hard to say how much of an impact performance in Qatar will have on those decisions, particularly if an announcement is to be made by the end of the weekend.
Cover image via Red Bull Content Pool.
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