Helmut Marko has admitted that one Red Bull star 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 at this stage.
While all the attention has been on Perez,Ricciardo and even Carlos Sainz for a future Red Bull seat, one man who has been conducting his business fairly quietly 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 low 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 Formula 1.
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.”
Will Fernando Alonso be around by then aged 44? It’s hard to tell. But, Tsunoda has to be considered a front-running candidate for any future Aston Martin seats available with Honda in mind.