Helmut Marko has admitted that one young Formula 1 driver is being lined up by other teams for a possible move beyond the end of the 2024 season.
Currently, there are a few question marks over the futures of certain drivers within the Red Bull talent pool – particularly Sergio Perez and Daniel Ricciardo.
However, Red Bull lie top of the constructors’ standings, while sister team Visa Cash App RB are sixth after a fantastic performance by Yuki Tsunoda at the Australian Grand Prix.
While they haven’t extracted everything possible from every race so far, they are still achieving about as much as they could have hoped for at this stage.
All of the attention has been on Perez, Ricciardo and even Carlos Sainz regarding a future Red Bull seat, but one man has been conducting his business fairly quietly, and is now starting to be noticed by rival teams.
Yuki Tsunoda’s seventh place at the Australian Grand Prix is the difference between his team being four places lower than they currently lie in the standings.
In the absence of any heroics from his more experienced Australian team-mate Ricciardo, he has stepped up to deliver in his fourth season in F1.
It’s something that Red Bull advisor Marko told speekweek.com that he had noticed, and it’s causing other teams to sniff around the Japanese driver.
"His problems were lack of control, outbursts and proneness to errors,” said Marko. “All of that is gone this season. Yuki came to Europe very young and that is very, very hard for a Japanese person.
“It's a completely different life for us. But now things are working, and Yuki is being noticed on the driver market.”
Honda’s 2026 engine deal with Aston Martin could hold serious repercussions for Tsunoda’s future, with the company that backs his career switching allegiance.
Will Fernando Alonso be around by then aged 44? It’s hard to tell. But maybe Tsunoda will be considered a front-running candidate for any future Aston Martin seats available, with Honda in mind.