Verstappen Drove the Race of the Season. Tsunoda Wasted It.

One Red Bull finished P2 in a wet Singapore chaos race. The other finished lapped, 12th, and a minute behind — on the same strategy.

Eleven drivers didn't finish Singapore. George Russell won it. But the most brutal result was inside Red Bull Racing: one driver finished P2, the other got lapped and came home 12th. Same car. Same one-stop strategy. Same conditions.

The gap at the flag was 100 seconds.

Key Finding

Verstappen ran 43 laps on hard tyres in mixed conditions and lost one second per lap slower than his teammate. That's the difference between a champion and a passenger.

This wasn't a close fight

TSU vs VER — gap between them on every lap

The gap opens at Lap 13 — Tsunoda's pit stop — and never stabilizes. By Lap 30, Verstappen is half a minute clear. By the flag, it's over a minute and a half.

TSU aheadVER ahead

Final gap: VER ahead by 110.3s.

Key Finding

Verstappen ran 43 laps on hard tyres in mixed conditions and lost one second per lap slower than his teammate. That's the difference between a champion and a passenger.

Let's be precise about what happened here. This was not a strategic disaster. Both drivers ran the same race: soft tyres for the opening stint, hard compound to the flag. Tsunoda stopped Lap 13. Verstappen stopped Lap 19. From the moment Tsunoda rejoined on hards, he lost ground every single lap.

The average lap time gap across the race was 1.2 seconds. Over 62 laps in Singapore — the most punishing track on the calendar, the most physically demanding race of the season, four rain cycles, a red flag at the end — Verstappen was faster every single stint, on every compound, in every condition.

The strategy wasn't the problem

TSU vs VER — tyre strategy across 62 laps

Tsunoda stopped earlier — Lap 13 vs Lap 19 — and ran 48 laps on the hard tyre. Verstappen ran 43. Tsunoda's stint should have been harder. It wasn't. He was just slower.

TSU: S→H | VER: S→H

Key Finding

Verstappen ran 43 laps on hard tyres in mixed conditions and lost one second per lap slower than his teammate. That's the difference between a champion and a passenger.

Here's the part that should worry Tsunoda: the degradation numbers say he didn't destroy his tyres. His hard-compound stint degraded at +0.011 seconds per lap. Verstappen's degraded at +0.013s. Tsunoda managed his rubber better. He was still over a second slower per lap.

That means this wasn't about pushing too hard early or falling off a cliff late. This was about baseline pace. In the wet, in the dry, on old tyres, on fresh tyres — Verstappen was faster. Not by a few tenths. By over a second. Lap after lap after lap.

Even their fastest laps tell the story

TSU (Lap 45) vs VER (Lap 30) — fastest laps compared

These are their quickest laps of the race — Tsunoda on Lap 45, Verstappen on Lap 30. Look at the straight-line speed through Turns 1–5 and the mid-corner minimum in Sector 2. Verstappen is carrying more speed everywhere.

TSU (Lap 45)VER (Lap 30)

Fastest laps: TSU Lap 45, VER Lap 30.

Key Finding

Verstappen ran 43 laps on hard tyres in mixed conditions and lost one second per lap slower than his teammate. That's the difference between a champion and a passenger.

This is the race where the argument dies. Not the argument about who's the faster Red Bull driver — that was settled a long time ago. The argument that Tsunoda is close. That he's developing. That given the right circumstances, he can match Verstappen's pace.

He can't. Not in Singapore, not in these conditions, not over a full race distance. Verstappen ran longer on his opening stint, managed his tyres no worse, and still pulled 100 seconds clear by the flag. He finished on the podium. Tsunoda finished lapped, behind a Williams and an Aston Martin.

Key Finding

Verstappen ran 43 laps on hard tyres in mixed conditions and lost one second per lap slower than his teammate. That's the difference between a champion and a passenger.

The narrative heading to the United States Grand Prix will be about Russell's brilliant wet-weather win, about McLaren's fight for third, about the eleven retirements. But inside Red Bull, this result is a crisis. Not because Tsunoda had a bad race — he didn't bin it, he didn't make contact, he brought it home.

Because this was his clean race. And he was still nowhere.

Nadia Ferreira

@@nadia_f_racing

Tap to continue