Tsunoda’s first-day headaches in the Red Bull cockpit

After the expectation, the reality. Yuki Tsunoda’s first day actually driving Red Bull’s diva-ish RB21 Formula 1 machine, as opposed to piloting an ersatz version of it in a simulator, answered some questions while leaving others hanging.

Very few of those matters outstanding were Tsunoda’s fault, though, owing to the second practice session being punctuated by four red-flag periods. These not only cost him track time in a car whose performance peaks are notoriously difficult to access, they prevented him from performing a qualifying simulation on soft tyres.

As such, while a glance at the FP2 times suggests calamity – team-mate Max Verstappen posted the eighth fastest lap while Tsunoda was 18th, nearly two seconds slower – the reality is more nuanced.

In FP1 they had been much closer in terms of overall lap time: fifth and sixth with Tsunoda just 0.107s off Verstappen.

Veritably it was a day for those who regard themselves as F1’s bellwethers to perform what’s known in the trade as a ‘reverse ferret’. Having proclaimed Tsunoda the new messiah after FP1, they pivoted to derision – the new pariah? – as FP2 came to a close.

The real picture was always going to be challenging to decode, since part of the Suzuka track has been resurfaced and will therefore evolve differently over the course of the weekend, and Tsunoda was going to have to feel out those areas where the real RB21’s behaviour differs from the one he’s driven in the simulator. ‘Feel’ being the operative word here since even the most sophisticated simulator can only transmit some seat-of-the-pants sensation because it can’t recreate g-loadings other than those caused by major changes of direction.

Not only that, if Red Bull could recreate in the simulator the RB21’s rear-end twitchiness as the driver leans on the front axle, it would be well along the road to understanding how to fix that trait in the real car.

Also, Red Bull had introduced three minor aerodynamic changes with a view to cleaning up airflow around the rear end: a reprofiled engine cover and cooling exit, an enlarged rear brake duct outlet, and a new rear wishbone shroud. Teams now have to document such changes and Red Bull’s spiel claimed the engine cover and brake duct changes were principally for reliability reasons, but such amendments can and do have performance implications.

Disrupted FP2 gave Tsunoda little time in the Red Bull

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

At the end of FP1 Tsunoda came on the radio to describe the car as “interesting”. He didn’t make the same observation as Verstappen, which was that he felt like his RB21 was “flexing” through sector two, the area that starts at the Degner curves and runs to midway along the back straight.

Of course, the car may not actually have been flexing, but producing sensations analogous to that – the second Degner, the Hairpin and the Spoon are areas where the RB21’s tendency to lurch from understeer to oversteer will manifest themselves. Verstappen may just have been trying to express the feeling as viscerally as possible.

Tsunoda, as the new boy, won’t have been keen to denigrate the car on his first day. And, in any case, as Liam Lawson found to his cost, it is what it is.

Still, there was a slightly hangdog quality to Tsunoda’s demeanour when F1 TV caught up with him after FP2.

“FP1 was better than expected – FP2, yeah, I didn’t set a lap time,” he said. “I think there’s lots of work to do, we slightly… struggled, something to look through in the data from FP2 more, but overall it’s OK.

“I just have to build up confidence more. It [the RB21] is a bit different to the simulator – what I felt. To be honest, a little more than I was expecting in terms of car feeling.

“But it’s always going to be a bit different in the real car. It [the car’s tendency towards snap oversteer] was just a little more exaggerated in the real car, feeling a bit more tricky.”

Tsunoda admitted to finding a larger-than-expected difference between sim and reality

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

The four red flags in FP2 were disruptive to everyone but the stoppage prompted by Fernando Alonso’s off-track excursion was the one that cost Tsunoda, who had only just gone out on soft tyres to attempt a performance run. Following that, the team adjusted its run plan and sent him out on a race simulation.

While that will have been useful in terms of learning how the car balance changes over the race, missing the push-laps could prove to be damaging. Suzuka, for all that fans and drivers venerate its brilliance, is a tough track on which to overtake.

Qualifying is (almost) everything here given the challenge of passing on track, which leaves FP3 as Tsunoda’s last opportunity to feel his way towards the RB21’s limits before qualifying.

At the moment his loudest fan is former Racing Bulls boss Franz Tost, a guest pundit this weekend on the Austrian TV channel ORF. Freed from the corporate yolk and manifestly keen to top up his pension fund with further appearance fees, Tost gave free vent to his opinions on how Red Bull blundered in choosing Lawson over Tsunoda in the first place.

“Yuki has incredible natural speed,” thundered Tost. “I’ve been saying that for years. Now, he just needs to put it all together properly.”

If he doesn’t, will Tost be the next pundit to pivot?