Yuki Tsunoda

Yuki Tsunoda was dejected after qualifying 15th in his first race as a Red Bull driver.

Although he reached the second stage of qualifying, something his predecessor Liam Lawson did not manage in his two appearances for the team, Tsunoda was unable to make it any further.

He was half a second slower than team mate Max Verstappen when he was knocked out, 15th and last in Q2. While his team mate went on to take pole position, Tsunoda will also line up behind both drivers from his former team Racing Bulls.

Having been ninth in final practice before qualifying, Tsunoda hoped to progress to Q3. He suspected he fell short on his final lap because his tyre preparation was not good enough.

“I think the warm-up didn’t go as I wanted,” he told the official F1 channel. “I’m still learning.

“The warm-up, how I ended up, I thought it was okay, I knew [I was] maybe a little bit compromised, but the penalty was pretty big.

“It’s a shame that I wasn’t able to extract the performance from the car. I think we were looking good from Q1 and everything. It just felt overall worse and worse throughout, so it’s a shame.”

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However Tsunoda said he was encouraged by his feeling at the wheel of the car. “At least the confidence in the car feels good now,” he said. “It’s just I wasn’t able to put it all together today, so, very sad.”

Tsunoda is yet to take a point in a grand prix this year, having scored all his points in the sprint race at Shanghai. The rainy conditions forecast for tomorrow may hand him an opportunity to recover from his low starting position.

“I’ll do my best,” he said. “On those days, anything can happen. So whatever condition, I will stay focused.”

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Yuki Tsunoda is confident he will be able to cope with the unusual handling characteristics of Red Bull’s car following his sudden promotion to the team after the last race.

Red Bull moved Tsunoda into the team in place of Liam Lawson, who struggled in his first two appearances for them in Melbourne and Shanghai. He replaced Sergio Perez, who was dropped by the team at the end of last year, as he had fallen far behind the pace of team mate Max Verstappen.

Tsunoda said he is “really looking forward” to his debut for the team, which coincides with his home round of the championship at Suzuka.

“It can’t be crazier than this situation,” said Tsunoda. “First race in Red Bull Racing, but also on top of it in the home grand prix. I think it’s the best situation ever.”

He has only driven the team’s RB21 in the simulator so far. Lawson, who has returned to Tsunoda’s former seat at Racing Bulls, found it difficult to adapt to the car, but Tsunoda is confident he will be able to adjust to it.

“First of all, I didn’t feel yet the exact trickiness what the driver is saying,” he said. “I have a bit of an idea from the simulator, but it’s always a bit different from the simulator to the real car.

“So I’ll see after [first practice] if I have to change set-up, but I don’t think I have to change my driving style because in the end, so far it works well, I guess, with [Racing Bulls], otherwise probably I wouldn’t be here wearing this logo.

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“So I’ll just do whatever I was doing previously and I’ll go step-by-step to build the pace and everything. But let’s see, maybe I don’t have to do that, maybe the car is good straight away. In the last years I think Red Bull had pretty good performance last season, both cars, so I’m quite looking forward it.”

Tsunoda began the season in his fifth year at Red Bull’s junior team. He had his first test for Red Bull at the end of last year at the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi, which he said gave him useful insight into the peculiarities of their car’s handling.

“If you’re able to push with that car straight away, with more than I guess above 95 [percent] just for the reference, you start to feel a bit of sliding front and rear first thing,” he explained. “You feel sliding once you start turning in, at the front and rear you see the limitation.”

He felt able to push the car and get a feel for its limitations. “In the Abu Dhabi test, fortunately there are a lot of run-off areas, so I was able to push immediately, knowing that even I push and if I go too much I know that there’s a bit of space to be forgiven. That’s why I was able to push it immediately.

“At the same time, at that point, I felt quite okay with the car. The RB20 had a historically big limitation with instability and I think it was quite clear, visible, that as soon as I turned in, it was always happening with that kind of characteristic. So probably even [though] I was not pushing enough, I already felt those things.

“The main thing is I didn’t have any reference driver to know actually am I driving fast enough or not, to exaggerate that kind of limitation. But I think RB20 was quite easy and having already quite big limitation enough to feel that I had instability quite a lot initially turning in.”

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Driving Red Bull’s current car in the simulator reinforced Tsunoda’s impression of the car’s behaviour at the limit of grip.

“I just felt it in the car in the simulator – obviously I’m sure it’s not fully correlated in terms of the trickiness of the car – but at least didn’t feel like crazy, crazy tricky.

“At the same time I can feel what the drivers was mentioning about the instability or driver confidence things. I tried different set-ups that I wanted to try to make it a little bit better and actually those two days were pretty productive.

“At least I know now what kind of direction I want to start and it seems to be a good baseline also [for] overall performance so I think it was a really, really good simulator session.”

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The stakes are sky-high for Yuki Tsunoda as he takes his chance to drive for Red Bull on home ground and potentially secure his future in Formula 1.

Here are the talking points for the Japanese Grand Prix.

Next into the lion’s den

Even by Red Bull’s standards, booting Liam Lawson out after just two rounds was a brutal call.

But his departure hands a precious opportunity to a driver whose chances of staying in Formula 1 beyond the end of this year did not look great beforehand.

Having been passed over for the Red Bull seat at the end of last year, Yuki Tsunoda faced a fifth season at their second team. His prospects of being promoted to their top squad appeared to be over and nor were there any obvious opportunities at rival teams.

Now he’s been handed the chance he was denied at the end of last year. With four years’ experience, he is certainly better placed than Lawson to take advantage of it. But now it’s all about how he delivers.

He is the third different driver in four races to occupy the garage adjacent to that of world champion Max Verstappen. Lawson and Sergio Perez before him couldn’t make the Red Bull handle to their liking.

Not only must Tsunoda succeed where they failed, he needs to do it at one of the most demanding tracks on the calendar with all the attendant pressure of being the only Japanese representative on the grid. This will be his toughest challenge in F1 by a long way.

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Doohan compromised

Mastering Suzuka in an unfamiliar car is no trivial matter for a driver as experienced as Tsunoda. So spare a thought for Jack Doohan, who in only his fourth appearance has been told he must sit out first practice in order to let the team’s reserve driver Ryo Hirakawa run on home ground.

This is a surprising decision by Alpine as it deprives Doohan of vital practice time early in the season at a particularly challenging track where drivers benefit from every lap they can get to build up their confidence. Those who believe some in his team have long been planning to replace him with another driver, such as Franco Colapinto, will suspect the hand of Flavio Briatore in this.

McLaren’s winning run

McLaren head to Suzuka having won the last three grands prix in a row. Are the reigning constructors’ champions now a dominant force in Formula 1 or will one of their rivals disrupt their run this weekend?

Lando Norris controlled proceedings in the final race of last season and prevailed in rainy conditions at Melbourne despite a Safety Car period wiping out McLaren’s lead at one stage. In China he had to settle for second place behind team mate Oscar Piastri.

The MCL39 is undoubtedly a potent but also tricky to handle at the limit. Both Norris and Piastri were caught out by its balance at times in China, committing minor errors. Suzuka, a narrow track with little run-off in places, threatens to punish any slip-ups of that type far more harshly.

Meanwhile the competitive picture behind McLaren is still coming into focus. Verstappen made the rare admission he left lap time on the table during his first stint in Shanghai, so spooked were Red Bull by the steep degradation they encountered on the medium rubber during the sprint race.

Lewis Hamilton’s sprint race victory show Ferrari can spring a surprise and George Russell has been within range in his Mercedes. His claim McLaren’s advantage at present is comparable to Red Bull’s in 2023 is obvious hyperbole: They are ahead, but far from unbeatable.

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Honda’s home celebration

Four years after Red Bull originally planned to honour Honda with a special livery at the manufacturer’s home race – but were thwarted when the round was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic – the team will do so this weekend. Red Bull has revealed the special white-and-red colour scheme the RB21s will sport at Suzuka.

They and junior team Racing Bulls will also carry special logos marking their final season using Honda power units. Will they say ‘sayonara’ with a win?

Red Bull will begin using their own hybrid power units, developed in conjunction with Ford, while Aston Martin will team up with Honda. But Red Bull and Honda have been a formidable combination over recent years, and there must be some regret on both sides about the succession of decisions which has led them to part ways.

Ferrari fumbling – and not fast enough?

It hasn’t been a smooth start to the season for Ferrari. Lewis Hamilton’s sprint race victory in China appears to have been a false dawn.

That triumph was a welcome tonic following the frustrations of Albert Park, where both drivers slipped down the order after pitting too late to switch to intermediate tyres when it rained. In China neither were quite quick enough, they lost too much time switching positions and then both were disqualified – for different reasons.

Beneath all that is a nagging concern that the car isn’t quite quick enough. They’ve already lost significant ground to their main rivals over the opening rounds and need to steady the ship with a solid result this weekend.

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