Yuki Tsunoda will make a return to the cockpit of a Formulation 1 automobile for an illustration occasion in San Francisco.
The Purple Bull take a look at and reserve driver will be part of former F1 and rallycross driver Scott Pace, Ford off-road racer Mitch Guthrie and freestyle motocross rider Aaron Colton. Tsunoda will take the motive force’s seat of Purple Bull’s double-title-winning 2011 RB7.
“I can’t wait to get again behind the wheel of an F1 automobile, and to do this in [the] RB7 in San Francisco might be wonderful,” Tsunoda stated. “I’m actually wanting ahead to getting on the market, performing some donuts and making some actual F1 noise in entrance of the crowds.”
The Japanese driver misplaced his full-time F1 seat on the finish of 2025. 2026 is Tsunoda’s sixth yr within the Purple Bull household. Having made his debut with AlphaTauri (now generally known as Racing Bulls) in 2021, he remained with the Purple Bull sister workforce till he changed Liam Lawson within the then Christian Horner-led workforce forward of the 2025 Japanese Grand Prix.
Tsunoda had till the tip of the 2025 season to show he was price a contract extension. Nonetheless, Purple Bull opted to maneuver the 25-year-old to a take a look at and reserve driver function and promote Racing Bulls driver Isack Hadjar to the seat alongside four-time champion Max Verstappen.
Purple Bull workforce principal Laurent Mekies, who changed Horner in July 2025, defined the choice to make the “tough name”.
“It has been a really tough determination to take. The second seat at Purple Bull shouldn’t be a simple one. We now have a troublesome automobile to drive. And naturally, we’ve got tried every thing we might to assist Yuki.
“At some stage, we needed to make the tough name between the place we have been seeing that going for the next years.”
Yuki Tsunoda, Purple Bull Racing
Picture by: Jayce Illman / Getty Pictures
He added: “I hope, and I feel, that Yuki will get one other likelihood. He would be the reserve driver with us subsequent yr. You by no means know what is going on to occur. We now have been fairly well-known in making pretty swift driver choices prior to now. I recall one second — on the finish of the 2024 season, Yuki was driving very properly.
“It was very tough for him to digest. Liam was getting the promotion in Purple Bull Racing. He went into the winter pondering, was he going to get the prospect at some point or not?
“He got here again, and we set ourselves with the workforce on the time the target to maximise every thing — to shoot for the celebrities. Three races after, he was driving in that Purple Bull workforce. So that you by no means know what the long run holds. I am certain everybody on this room and past has skilled setbacks — generally exhausting setbacks.
“That’s a setback for him. However I’m assured that he has loads in him that may permit him to have one other alternative.”
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