Photo: Red Bull
Honda hopes that Ayumu Iwasa can utilise his maiden free practice outing with Red Bull Racing to boost his career, amid the team’s much publicised recent driver line-up complications.
The 23-year-old has driven in Formula 1 practice sessions before, but his two call-ups in 2024 were with Racing Bulls which is the the other Red Bull-owned team on the grid.
At the Bahrain Grand Prix this Friday, the Super Formula points leader will take over the car of reigning world champion Max Verstappen.
“We hope that Ayumu Iwasa will make the most of this valuable opportunity to drive the car that won the latest F1 Japanese Grand Prix, turning these 60 minutes into a stepping stone for the future,” said Honda Racing Corporation’s president Koji Watanabe.
Racing Bulls promoted Isack Hadjar from Formula 2 to partner fifth-year Yuki Tsunoda in its 2025 line-up, but after just two rounds Tsunoda went to Red Bull Racing in a swap with the underperforming Liam Lawson. Following round three, Hadjar is ahead of both in the standings and neither of the swapped drivers’ seats look totally secure for the rest of the season.
Iwasa said “I’m very looking forward to get some new experience in the car”, which has proven to be a competitive package but a difficult one to master for Lawson and Tsunoda so far.
Should Iwasa make a strong impression in practice, it could put both of those drivers under more pressure and boost his own F1 ambitions having become Racing Bulls’ official test driver shortly before the team revised its race driver line-up.
Iwasa was a Red Bull junior from 2021 to ’24, and has been a Honda junior since 2020. He won the French Formula 4 title that year, raced in the FIA Formula 3 Championship in 2021 then did two season in Formula 2 where he won five races, took seven other podiums and was fourth in the standings in his second campaign.
Having missed out on a Racing Bulls seat for 2024, Honda and Red Bull sent him to SF where he was competitive enough to win the title as a rookie at single-seaters’ top level but his season crumbled in the last event. Following that he drove for Racing Bulls in free practice and post-season testing in Abu Dhabi, but it was announced shortly after he would race in SF again in 2025.