Yuki Tsunoda has been handed a boost in his hopes of making rapid progress in understanding the quirks of Red Bull’s Formula 1 cars, with the squad lining up a test programme for him next week after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Tsunoda is coming off the back of an intense three-week spell at Red Bull where there has been little respite amid the triple headers of Japan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
But with the team encouraged by the progress he has made, and happy that his technical feedback is helping it unlock some answers as to the challenges it faces with its current RB21, Red Bull is making sure it does not miss any opportunity to further fast track his progress.
The Race has learned that Red Bull has committed to an intense week of work for Tsunoda after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in the hope of him making further steps forward before the next race in Miami.
This will include work in Red Bull’s simulator next Tuesday, before Tsunoda is handed a day of running in Red Bull’s RB19 car at Silverstone the day after.
The run in the 2023 car will fall under the allowances that F1 teams are given for the Testing of Previous Cars - which are those that competed in any of the three calendar years prior to the preceding year.
Red Bull has picked the RB19 because the car was ultra successful - winning every race bar one that season - so should give Tsunoda a better insight into what a well-performing current ground effect car should feel like.
The decision by Red Bull to run Tsunoda at Silverstone highlights the kind of efforts that the squad is making to ensure he is as comfortable as he can be as he adjusts to life in the team.
While the car is not identical to the current RB21, a proper day of testing will allow Tsunoda and the team the chance to experiment with set-ups and explore various technical ideas together.
Tsunoda himself has admitted that despite having three races under his belt, there is still so much to learn about the car and how to get the most from it.
“I'm just trying to understand how this car operates, how this car performs well,” he said in Jeddah.
“I think I'm not really understanding even half of it. These things are the key that I'm trying to work really hard on to understand as soon as possible, so I can work on different sort of stuff - all sorts of development and whatever.”
Red Bull used the RB19 to give Tsunoda’s predecessor Liam Lawson a winter wake-up test at Jerez in February, prior to his first running in the team’s 2025 challenger.
Teams are allowed a maximum of 20 days of TPC running each year, but with their race drivers limited to a combined total of 1000 kilometres over a maximum of four days.
