Red Bull take 'huge step forward' with Yuki Tsunoda but rookie hailed F1 revelation

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Yuki Tsunoda has helped Red Bull take "a huge step forward", according to Helmut Marko, but it is another burgeoning talent who has caught the eye of the team's veteran advisor. Tsunoda was surprisingly handed a long-awaited opportunity with Red Bull after Marko and team principal Christian Horner decided that Liam Lawson was not up to scratch after the opening two races in Australia and China. Lawson, promoted over Tsunoda in December after Red Bull severed its ties with Sergio Perez, was demoted back to Racing Bulls, with the Japanese driver suddenly thrust into the hot seat as Max Verstappen's team-mate. Tsunoda followed up a tricky opening weekend on home soil in Japan, where he finished 12th, by scoring the second seat's first points of the season the following weekend in Bahrain by placing ninth after qualifying 10th. Tsunoda started eighth for the concluding race of the triple-header in Saudi Arabia last weekend, only to collide with Alpine's Pierre Gasly on the opening lap at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, forcing both into retirement. Assessing Tsunoda's first three races in which he has had little time to draw breath following his promotion, via his Speedweek column, Marko said: "His speed is right, as is his approach. "When things get serious in qualifying, he loses time to Max, but the normal range is two or three tenths. Tsunoda goes his own way. "A crash like the one with Gasly on the first lap of the Saudi Arabian GP is possible. According to our calculations, he could have finished sixth. And that's a huge step forward, because before him, our second car rarely came close to the top 10." It is Tsunoda's former Racing Bulls team-mate Isack Hadjar who has impressed Marko, however. Hadjar's rookie campaign could have easily unravelled after crashing out on the formation lap of the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. But the young French-Algerian driver has shown strength of character to put that incident behind him and deliver superb displays, particularly in qualifying, where he has an average grid slot of 10th, notably after starting from seventh in China and Japan. The 20-year-old went on to finish eighth at Suzuka, and most recently 10th in Saudi Arabia. "In my opinion, Hadjar is the revelation of this first phase of the world championship," assessed Marko. "The young Parisian didn't know most of the circuits, but was always fast right from the start and made few mistakes, apart from the mistake in Australia. "Isack achieves in the races what many Formula 1 rookies struggle with - he consistently posts good lap times while managing his tyres very well. He delivers all of this relatively calmly." As for Lawson on his return to Racing Bulls, Marko feels the New Zealander "is doing well", picking up the pace in Jeddah where he was "a touch faster than Isack", according to the 81-year-old who concluded that he "has settled in".