Red Bull expects to make a decision on its 2026 Formula 1 driver line-up before the end of the season, giving Yuki Tsunoda just a handful of races to keep his seat.
Tsunoda finally ended a seven-race point-less run with ninth place in the Dutch Grand Prix, but was comprehensively overshadowed by Isack Hadjar, the leading contender to take Tsunoda's place alongside Max Verstappen, scoring his first F1 podium for Red Bull's second team.
After Hadjar's stunning run to third at Zandvoort, where he was brilliant in both qualifying and the grand prix, he said he is "ready for anything" when asked about being promoted to Red Bull next year - something the team is seriously considering.
Despite flashes of potential, Tsunoda is failing his big audition. So while Red Bull's preference is for it to work Tsunoda, he has only been given a handful more races to prove himself.
After Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko reportedly stated in ORF's qualifying broadcast at Zandvoort that a decision on the 2026 line-up will be made around the Mexican GP at the end of October, team boss Laurent Mekies confirmed that Red Bull will not wait until the very end of the year to decide.
"It's nine races to go," said Mekies. "I'm not telling you that we'll wait until the last race, because also, there is a dynamic by which you want to let your driver know.
"But we have time."
There will be just four races left of the season after Mexico, which suggests Red Bull has almost seen enough and does not feel the need to let Tsunoda complete the whole campaign before it makes its mind up.
Red Bull let its second-driver decision formally roll into the period just before Christmas last year, when it eventually decided to replace Sergio Perez with Liam Lawson, and when Perez was picked to take Alex Albon's place for 2021 that also came at the end of the 2020 season.
Its ideal scenario remains for Tsunoda to come good, and keep him in the seat next year. That would bring much-needed stability and give Hadjar the chance to build experience at the second team so when his promotion does come, he has a better chance of being ready for it.
But replacing Tsunoda with Hadjar, then pairing Liam Lawson with Arvid Lindblad at Racing Bulls, is the more likely outcome on current form and was already mooted by Red Bull bosses before the summer break.
While the Zandvoort result will not be decisive for Red Bull, Hadjar's status as a serious option for next year marks quite a turnaround in prospects given a year ago he was not sure he would get promoted to F1 at all for 2025.
Marko claimed that "we chose him, so we knew he's something special", and said he used to call him a little Alain Prost, but the reality is Red Bull had not actually treated Hadjar like a definite superstar as he only stepped up to an F1 race seat because of the reshuffle Sergio Perez's exit triggered.
If Red Bull really knew he was this good all along, his original F1 graduation would never have been in question. It did genuinely believe Hadjar had great potential, though, and he is performing at the very top end of that now - hence the amplified calls to take him seriously as an immediate 2026 option.
Marko said "we will decide that later" when Sky Sports F1's Karun Chandhok tried to push him on what Hadjar needs to do to get the promotion. But Red Bull will have a harder time sidestepping the move as a talking point if Hadjar and Tsunoda keep performing as they are.
And the next phase of speculation should it decide to change drivers next year will inevitably be over whether that means Red Bull would make a driver change before the end of the season too.
As this is Red Bull, if it decides on a 2026 plan of 'Hadjar in, Tsunoda out', then it would also have the power to proceed with that for the final races of this season and give Lindblad his F1 debut at Racing Bulls in the process, all as a head start for next year.
Would 'special' Hadjar fix the problem?
Liam Lawson was shockingly off the pace in his first two events as Verstappen's team-mate, leading to his immediate demotion, but while Tsunoda has shown better performance, he has still only scored nine points in 13 events.
Tsunoda was given something of a reprieve off the back of Red Bull updating his car specification just before the summer break to bring him equal with Verstappen on its major upgrades, particularly the floor.
That sparked a clear improvement in one-lap pace from Tsunoda and as the season resumed at Zandvoort, he claimed that Red Bull and especially Marko hadn't realised just how much the outdated spec was holding him back.
It is still believed that part of Tsunoda's fresh chance has come via Mekies, whose first race after replacing Christian Horner happened to be the first race Tsunoda got more or less the same car spec.
While Tsunoda knows he still needs to improve his actual results, he feels he has been given more time to do that by Marko and Mekies. But he needs to do more with it.
Although he did score points, Zandvoort was not the weekend Tsunoda would have hoped for to start the back end of the season.
He was clearly confused by a disappointing qualifying performance in which he was eliminated in Q2. And in the race, Tsunoda struggled to make progress from 12th, even though he did eventually finish ninth thanks to a flurry of retirements.
While Hadjar spent the race fending off Charles Leclerc's Ferrari and George Russell's Mercedes, and scored his first F1 podium when Lando Norris retired, Tsunoda was stuck in traffic. Then his final stint was compromised by being in the wrong throttle map, so he had no power until 40% throttle was applied.
It is not clear if being in that map after his final pitstop was Red Bull's fault or Tsunoda failing to reset it before leaving the pitlane, after which it is locked.
Regardless, that plus the timing of different safety cars probably stopped Tsunoda inherited a result like seventh in this race - which would have been decent, but still circumstantial.
Mekies said post-race that he feels Tsunoda is still on a "positive trend" even though both Red Bull and Tsunoda can "do more". But he has also tasked Tsunoda with meeting some clear targets: to close the gap to Verstappen, and to keep scoring points.
Should Tsunoda fail to make the improvement Red Bull expects, it is impossible to be sure Hadjar would be an upgrade given good work at the second team was no guarantee of success for Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Lawson and now Tsunoda.
Hadjar has been better than Lawson at Racing Bulls but Lawson struggled so much in such a small sample set of races at Red Bull Racing that their comparison as team-mates is of limited value.
One key factor, though, is whether Hadjar makes too compelling a case not to just give him a go. Qualifying fourth and finishing third was not just a return to the kind of headline-grabbing result that characterised his high-flying start to the European season in May and June, it was a new peak entirely.
Mekies said it was an "extraordinary race" and testament to what an "amazing job he has been doing since the beginning of the season". Marko's also praised his "outstanding" confidence and been very impressed by his quick adaptation to almost every circuit this year, claiming "after three laps, he's competitive" - the kind of trait Marko absolutely loves, and one that is usually the sign of a top-level driver.
This all appears to have led Red Bull to believe that, while a 2026 Red Bull Racing seat would come earlier than it would like, Hadjar might become its outright best option.
What Red Bull boss is saying
Tsunoda’s former Racing Bulls boss Mekies’ arrival at Red Bull in place of Christian Horner was seen as a potential boost for Tsunoda, and publicly at least Mekies continues to be highly supportive of his struggling driver.
He insists he will bide his time over a decision and will not let a final call be influenced by the highs and lows of individual race weekends.
Asked by The Race at Zandvoort if there was now any reason not to slot Hadjar at Red Bull next year, Mekies replied: "As much as we like the emotion of the race by race feeling, we had a feeling in Budapest and we have another feeling here.
"The truth is if you step back and look at it from a Red Bull perspective, it's our drivers. We have them all under contract. It's only us making the decisions, us being meaning the Red Bull group.
"Why would you put yourself under pressure based on one result or another? So hence the simple truth is that we'll take our time.
"It's nine races to go. I'm not telling you that we'll wait until the last race, because also, there is a dynamic by which you want to let your driver know. But we have time."
Speaking on what Red Bull expected from Tsunoda, Mekies said: "First, you can always do more. Always, we can do more. He can do more, always. So he's doing more and more. We are trying everything we can to support him.
"I think it's still a positive trend for Yuki. It's the first time back in the points after seven races. So Spa was a step forward. Budapest, as much as we were poor as a team, was a step forward in terms of gap to Max.
"Today is a P9, and with a bit more luck with the safety car, could have been a P8 or P7 even though the pace was difficult to evaluate.
"So, I think we just want to see him continue to progress; continue to close the gap to Max, and that's the main parameters, plus continue to score points, because that's ultimately what it is about."
But despite the patience that Red Bull is expressing with Tsunoda, it is clear Mekies is deeply impressed with what Hadjar is doing.
"For Isack it was an extraordinary race," he said.
"You can see it for yourself. I think it was coming. It's just a testimony of how good of a job, how amazing a job, he has been doing since the beginning of the season.
"Plus, he doesn't score a podium on the day where it's a wet race and there are strange conditions.
"He put the car in P4 on merit in qualifying, and he stayed a couple of seconds from Max all race long. So you know, hats off to him, and to Racing Bulls.
"It doesn't come by luck. It comes after a lot of hard work from these guys."
