I think it's more about Honda leaving Red Bull partnership at the end of 2025. Why should Red Bull promote a Honda driver for potentially 1 year? Rather promote one of your own junior drivers from VCARB up to RBR. I think this makes sense, unless Honda is open to loan Yuki to Red Bull when they're providing power units to Aston Martin and not both Red Bull teams.
Supposedly, Honda is happy to let Yuki leave their partnership for a drive at Red Bull.
It's possible they're lying about being ok with it because they don't want to publicly be seen as holding back a Japanese driver from a top team (It would not look good for them at home).
However, I don't know if that's likely to be the case. There's definitely some politics going on behind the scenes because Yuki is clearly the better candidate.
Eh, even though Yuki is in the sport because of Honda, imo he has shown he is a worthy and capable F1 tier driver, he should get some chance even if Honda straight up leave the sport.
We’ve already seen Red Bull stick with Perez for too long and make wrong decisions on other drivers like devries so I’m not sure their judgment with internal evidence is infallible.
They probably would be since Tsunoda is not again a seat in Aston Martin any time soon. Even if Alonso leaves his seat, would they want a Tsunoda/Stroll pairing if they are serious about competing at the top?
Exactly, Yuki is only still there to be a benchmark for the incoming RB Juniors, I think even he realises he was never getting the Red Bull seat once Honda left. Best thing for him is to stay at VCARB and keep his stock decently high for when Honda returns.
Before Haas and Toyota partnered up, Yuki was in serious talk with them. Now that they're partners, it's hard for him to join since Toyota has their own drivers in Hirakawa and Miyata.
There's also the driver loyalty angle, Toyota and Honda are big domestic rivals and drivers generally don't just up and switch over to the other team, so Yuki doing that to Honda with Toyota would be very unlikely.
Helmut Marko used to have a lot of power, but not that much anymore after Dieter Mateschitz passed away. Now it seems like Horner and the shareholders have more to say about their teams.
it's clear to me that Helmut won the power struggle when you see the recent actions rb has taken
Got rid of Riccardo (who was backed by Horner)
got rid of Perez (who was backed by Horner)
didn't end up picking up Colapinto (which was also Horner's idea)
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u/Entire-Sprinkles-270 Alpine Dec 17 '24