SUZUKA, Japan — Yuki Tsunoda’s first weekend behind the wheel of a Red Bull Racing Formula One car was always going to draw plenty of attention.
It was the moment Tsunoda had worked toward through his whole career, the opportunity coming about in unexpected fashion after Red Bull decided to swap him with the struggling Liam Lawson just two races into the new F1 season, sending Lawson back to Racing Bulls.
The hope was that putting Tsunoda into the Red Bull RB21 would provide an uplift in performance and results from the get-go at Suzuka, providing more support to Max Verstappen across the garage.
While Verstappen took a dominant victory from pole position on Sunday, Tsunoda crossed the line in 12th place after qualifying 15th. Hardly the kind of start that he would have dreamed of making, particularly on home soil in front of the Japanese fans.
Yet, Tsunoda’s true start to life with Red Bull held more positives than those results would suggest, as a handful of factors worked against him on Sunday.
“Everything was not towards me,” Tsunoda told reporters after the race. “But at the same time, I learned a lot of things about the car. So I’m excited for the next race.”
Tsunoda enters the garage during qualifying ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix. (Mark Thompson / Getty Images)
Tsunoda started the Suzuka weekend strongly, finishing just one-tenth of a second off Verstappen in FP1. Jack Doohan’s crash and the trackside fires limited running in FP2 before the gap in FP3, which was also subject to interruptions, stood at 0.288 seconds. A solid platform going into qualifying.
Tsunoda eased through Q1, lapping a mere 0.024 seconds off Verstappen, only for his weekend to unravel with his final effort in Q2. A mistake meant he went slower than he did in Q1, leaving him 15th in the qualifying classification. The gap to Verstappen was just under half a second, which was still closer than Lawson got in his three qualifying head-to-heads against the Dutchman.
“(Yuki) was 15 km/h quicker than he’s ever been into Turn 1,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner explained to reporters on Sunday. “He had a moment and then you’re chasing the lap the rest of the way. Qualifying dictated his race.”
The struggle for Tsunoda in qualifying was getting the tires into the right temperature window, something he highlighted on Sunday as being the biggest difference he found in the RB21 car. “That’s one of the things that made me struggle this weekend,” Tsunoda said. “But at least now I know the reason and I just have to do better.”
Red Bull opted to run a lower downforce rear wing on Verstappen’s car, which gave him a top-speed advantage over Tsunoda, as well as offering the Japanese driver slightly more stability with the troublesome rear end of the car. Tsunoda’s growing confidence prompted him to consider running as low a downforce profile as Verstappen ahead of qualifying, but the interruptions through FP2 and FP3 prompted him to stick with what he knew.
This led the setup of the car to be angled “more towards the rain,” according to Tsunoda. “So that was a bit unfortunate.” He always knew from 14th on the grid — gaining a position after Carlos Sainz’s penalty — that overtaking would be a challenge. The lack of edge for top speed, plus the surprisingly low tire degradation, made it all the more difficult.
Tsunoda made a decent start, saving a brief snap on the opening lap at the esses before passing Lawson into Spoon after his former teammate ran a bit wide. But the remainder of the opening stint was then spent in the wheeltracks of Pierre Gasly’s Alpine. Tsunoda kept up communications with his race engineer but explained that it was too hard to get close due to the dirty air. Drivers need around eight-tenths of a second of advantage to make an overtake, which, particularly in F1’s ultra-competitive midfield, was never going to emerge without a mistake.
A slow stop for Gasly helped Tsunoda get the undercut and move up a position, but he then fell into the same struggle to get close to the next car ahead, this time behind Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin. In a race without any kind of tire drop-off, incidents or safety cars, causing many of his peers to label it as being quite boring, Tsunoda could do nothing else but cross the line in 12th place.
“I can’t remember seeing any overtakes at all,” Horner said. “I think had he qualified higher, he would have finished naturally higher.”
Tsunoda and Lawson talk on the drivers’ parade before the Japanese Grand Prix. (Rudy Carezzevoli / Getty Images)
Hardly a headline result, but Tsunoda was upbeat when speaking to reporters post-race, admitting he had made “probably more” progress than he expected. Getting a 53-lap race distance under his belt was a big step for his confidence, which he said was “completely different compared to where I started in FP1” on Friday.
“I’m sure if I had one more qualifying, it would be a little bit different,” Tsunoda said. “But it’s too late, I don’t have any more. I just have to do better in the next race.”
Horner thought Tsunoda had settled into the team and gave good feedback through his first weekend, something very valuable at a time when the team are trying to iron out the issues with the RB21 car. “Now he’s finding his feet in the team,” Horner said. “And we’ll see over the next few races that performance will step forward.”
A positive element that Tsunoda reported from his start at Red Bull Racing was the atmosphere, including one funny moment when he tried complimenting his new mechanics, having switched from a largely Italian group at Racing Bulls.
“No offense, but (I thought) the British are a bit more straight, right?” Tsunoda said, drawing a glance from his press officer. “But actually, they are very, very friendly! I thought they would be more direct, but they’re very friendly, as much as Italians at (Racing Bulls). They were very, very supportive, even today after the race, they were saying good job. They’re excited for the next race.”
Tsunoda’s Red Bull debut may not have yielded the kind of big result that would have perfectly fit the narrative of the past few weeks. He admitted to feeling disappointed and frustrated not to have scored some points for the thousands of fans that cheered for him at Suzuka. But it was unquestionably a big step forward from where Lawson was, both in terms of performance and confidence levels, in the opening two races.
“I don’t think I started negatively this weekend, at least positive,” Tsunoda said. “I feel I had a good start, apart from the result. So I just use this kind of learning, the progress, the amount of speed I have throughout the week so far, and I just keep continuing for Bahrain (next weekend).
“But for Bahrain, I’m expecting for sure more than this. I just have to push more.”
(Top photo: Mark Thompson/Getty Images)