Racing Bulls has started the 2025 season with a surprisingly strong performance in terms of speed. The team, often seen as Red Bull’s junior squad, has regularly qualified at the front of the midfield. Yuki Tsunoda started fifth in Australia, and rookie Isack Hadjar qualified seventh in China.

On paper, they look like one of the most promising teams outside of the big names. But when you look at the points table, Racing Bulls is only ninth in the Constructors’ Championship. That’s a big gap compared to their pace and it’s mostly because of poor strategy choices during races.

In Formula 1, it’s not enough just to be fast. Teams also have to make the right decisions during the race, especially when it comes to when and how often to change tyres, or how to react to weather. These calls are called race strategy, and they can have a huge effect on the final result. Racing Bulls has made a few key strategy mistakes already this season, which have cost them valuable points.

In Australia, for example, Tsunoda was running well in sixth place during a race with changing weather. When the rain returned near the end, most drivers changed to intermediate tyres quickly. Racing Bulls waited too long, same as Ferrari, and only changed tyres a few laps later, when the rain was clearly getting heavier. By then it was too late, and Tsunoda finished outside the points.

After the race, both Tsunoda and the team admitted they made the wrong call. Team boss Laurent Mekies said that in F1, bad luck doesn’t really exist, it was simply a mistake, and they should have made the decision earlier.

In the next race in China, the team had another chance to score points. The race was dry, and before it started, the tyre supplier Pirelli suggested most drivers would need two pit stops. But during the race, tyre wear turned out to be much lower than expected, and nearly every team changed to a one-stop strategy.

Racing Bulls, however, still did two stops, which dropped both drivers out of the points. The extra time in the pits didn’t give them any advantage, and their lap times were barely faster than other midfield drivers on older tyres.

Hadjar, who is still very new to F1, said he didn’t feel like he could question the team’s plan. He trusted the strategy, but later said that if he had stopped only once, he might have finished in seventh place. Tsunoda was clearly frustrated as well. He said that in such a close season, every point is important and right now, the team is “wasting the pace in the car” by not making the most of it on race day.

Even though Racing Bulls is sometimes called a young team, that’s not really true. The team has been in F1 since 1985, first as Minardi and later as Toro Rosso and AlphaTauri. They’ve been part of the Red Bull family for almost 20 years and have even won races before, like with Pierre Gasly in 2020. So they definitely have the potential to do it again and that’s what makes these mistakes even more frustrating.

With 22 races still to go, there’s enough time for Racing Bulls to fix things and move up in the standings. But they need to start making better calls soon. Tsunoda is now also switching places with Liam Lawson, who can bring new fresh energy to the team and turn things around.