Red Bull Names Tsolov 2027 Reserve and Eyes Racing Bulls Seat for 2028

Red Bull has named Nikola Tsolov as reserve driver for both its senior team and Racing Bulls for the 2027 season, after the 19-year-old Bulgarian missed out on a full-time race seat. The announcement comes four days after a Brazilian Grand Prix in which Max Verstappen climbed from 21st on the grid to second and Isack Hadjar completed a double podium for the team. With Andrea Kimi Antonelli 111 points clear and three rounds left, the title is settled, which explains why Mercedes is now openly discussing how to help George Russell.

Why Red Bull is making Tsolov wait

Tsolov had been linked with a step up from Formula 2 to a race seat in 2027. Instead he gets a year on the sidelines, with RacingNews365 reading the arrangement as a clear route to a Racing Bulls drive in 2028. Red Bull has not dressed this up as a consolation prize. The signals are of a driver the company rates highly and wants to keep within reach.

The decision runs against the grain of Red Bull’s recent history. The programme has long been known for promoting quickly and discarding just as quickly. Pierre Gasly was demoted midway through 2019. Alexander Albon lost his seat after 2020. Nyck de Vries lasted 10 races in 2023. Liam Lawson was moved back to the junior team after two rounds of 2025.

Lawson’s story makes the case for patience better than any statement could. He is now ninth in the championship on 89 points, and in Brazil he started third and finished seventh. A driver judged too raw for the senior team in early 2025 has become a steady scorer because he was given time.

The counter-argument is leading the championship

Patience is not a universal law. Antonelli went from a single season of F2 into a Mercedes race seat for 2025 and, in his second season, has nine wins and 390 points. The lesson from his rise is less about timing than about environment. Mercedes promoted him into a stable team and protected him through the difficult early races. Red Bull’s problem has rarely been promoting drivers too soon. It has been what happened to them afterwards.

The value of Tsolov’s year will depend on how much mileage comes with the title. Reserve drivers spend most weekends in the garage and the simulator, and testing restrictions limit running in older cars. Mandatory rookie practice sessions offer some time in the car, but a 19-year-old needs competitive racing to stay sharp. If Red Bull can supply that, this is a sensible call. A gifted teenager who arrives in 2028 with a year of preparation behind him has a better chance of a lasting career than one thrown in to fill a gap.

Red Bull’s double podium in Brazil

Verstappen’s charge from 21st

Lando Norris won from pole, but the drive of the afternoon came from the other end of the grid. Verstappen started 21st and finished second, collecting 18 points and passing almost the entire field. In a 22-car era, that is about as far as anyone can climb.

RacingNews365’s technical analyst Paolo Filisetti argues that Verstappen was the most high-profile victim of a wider Red Bull problem that cost him a shot at victory. That reading fits the result. A car able to carry a driver from 21st to second clearly had race pace, so whatever stood between Verstappen and Norris was not a lack of raw speed alone.

The championship context limits what this charge can achieve. Verstappen is 111 points behind Antonelli, more than three weekends can return. His real target is second place, where he holds a 17-point cushion over Russell.

Hadjar’s best race in Red Bull colours

Team principal Laurent Mekies described Brazil as Hadjar’s best race for Red Bull. He started fifth and finished third, ahead of both Mercedes cars, on a day when his team-mate inevitably took the attention.

The second Red Bull seat has consumed drivers for years. Sergio Pérez, Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda all struggled alongside Verstappen. Hadjar’s 122 points, good for eighth in the standings, still leave a big gap to his team-mate’s 279. But a podium earned on merit, rather than inherited, is the sort of result that builds a driver’s standing inside a team.

It also matters in the constructors’ table. Red Bull (415 points) and McLaren (398) each scored 33 points in Brazil, so the fight for third remains at 17 points with three rounds to go. Norris can win races for McLaren, but Red Bull will keep third only if Hadjar keeps scoring like this.

Mercedes and the fight for second

According to PlanetF1, Mercedes has acknowledged that it needs to decide how to handle the runner-up battle. The numbers explain why.

Position	Driver	Team	Points	Gap to second
2	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	279	—
3	George Russell	Mercedes	262	17
4	Lewis Hamilton	Ferrari	261	18
5	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	249	30
6	Lando Norris	McLaren	246	33

Five drivers are covered by 33 points, and Russell has Hamilton just one point behind him. With the title decided, extra points now have little value to Antonelli individually. Swapping positions within Mercedes costs the team nothing in the constructors’ championship, where it leads Ferrari by 142 points.

Precedent counsels care

Formula 1 has seen this situation many times, and it rarely looks good. Ferrari’s choreographed handover in Austria in 2002 led to a ban on team orders that lasted until 2011. Mercedes’ own history includes Hamilton refusing to make way for Nico Rosberg in Hungary in 2014, and Valtteri Bottas being told to cede victory to Hamilton in Sochi in 2018, a win that was greeted by boos.

The sensible approach is narrower than a blanket instruction. If Antonelli finds himself directly ahead of Russell late in a race, letting him through is defensible and easy to explain. Asking a champion with nine wins to give up a possible victory, or to hold up Verstappen, is a different matter. Brazil also showed the limits of planning: Antonelli started second and finished fifth, behind Russell, so no order was needed. Russell’s route to second still runs through beating Verstappen himself.

Audi takes Monza to the Court of Appeal

The FIA’s International Court of Appeal will hear Audi’s case on 25 November, three days after Las Vegas. Audi is challenging the stewards’ decision not to penalise Yuki Tsunoda for an infringement at the Italian Grand Prix.

The sporting stakes are easy to see. Audi sits eighth in the constructors’ championship on 28 points, three behind Haas. Nico Hülkenberg’s 10th place in Brazil closed the gap by a point, and in a midfield this tight, any reclassification from Monza could change the final order and the prize money that comes with it. For a team in its first season under its own name, that difference matters.

The broader question concerns how stewarding works. Appeals against penalties are routine. Appeals against a decision not to penalise, heard more than two months after the race, sit less comfortably with the sport. Audi is entitled to test the ruling, and a clear judgement could usefully define the rule for 2027. Still, Formula 1 benefits when results are settled at the track. Whatever it decides, the court should rule on the principle quickly and with clear reasoning.

The $50 billion grid

GPfans reports that the 11 teams now carry a combined valuation of around $50 billion, with Ferrari at the top. Ferrari leading the valuations while Mercedes leads the constructors’ championship by 142 points shows how loosely brand value and results are now linked.

The mechanism is well understood. The cost cap, introduced in 2021, turned teams from businesses that consumed money into ones that can make a profit. Rising commercial revenue does the rest, and because the number of entries is effectively fixed, each team is a scarce franchise. Cadillac’s arrival as the 11th team, still without a point this year, shows that buyers are paying for a place in the sport rather than for recent results.

RacingNews365’s salary explainer notes that a round of new contracts has reshuffled the drivers’ pay table. Driver salaries sit outside the cost cap, so the sport’s growing wealth flows straight into the market for the top drivers.

The same scarcity applies to seats. Tsolov’s year as reserve driver is the junior version of that market: 22 places and more qualified candidates than ever. A $50 billion sport has made itself harder to break into, not easier.

Six threads to follow into Las Vegas

• Las Vegas, 22 November. Round 21 opens the final three races, with the runner-up fight and Red Bull versus McLaren for third in the constructors’ standings the main contests still open.
• Piastri’s winless season. Oscar Piastri took sixth from 10th on the grid in Brazil but sits seventh on 152 points without a win, 94 behind team-mate Norris. His final three races are worth watching for signs of recovery.
• Cadillac’s search for a first point. Sergio Pérez started 22nd and finished 18th in Brazil. With three rounds left, the newcomer is the only team still on zero.
• Palmowski’s lesson. F1 Academy champion Alisha Palmowski, a Red Bull junior racing with Campos, says simply watching Verstappen at work taught her the most important lesson of her title year.
• Grosjean steps back. Romain Grosjean says his single-seater career is probably over, closing a chapter that began in F1 and continued in America after his escape from the fiery crash in Bahrain in 2020.
• Aston Martin’s lost season. Seven points with three rounds to go leaves the team 10th of 11. Fernando Alonso’s drop from eighth on the grid to 12th in Brazil showed why.