Yuki Tsunoda’s poor grid position unsurprisingly translated into a disappointing result on his Red Bull debut in a stagnant Japanese Grand Prix.
It means the headline results make for bad reading: 15th in qualifying, 14th on the grid after a Carlos Sainz penalty, and a point-less 12th in the grand prix.
Tsunoda doesn’t need to match Max Verstappen. He has been told it’s about getting close as well as being in the mix strategically and providing good feedback. But still, this is not what Red Bull swapped out Liam Lawson for after just two races, and not what Tsunoda expected either.
An encouraging start to his weekend unravelled in the middle of qualifying as Tsunoda suddenly failed to hook it up in Q2, which he put down to not nailing his tyre preparation. And that set up his difficult Sunday afternoon.
But he did have the underlying speed to reach Q3, which is far beyond anything Lawson showed across his two weekends as a Red Bull driver. Hence Tsunoda and Red Bull are optimistic that the end result could have been very different, and that promise is what keeps Tsunoda’s debut from being as bad as it looked.
As he said: “In terms of the progress I had this week, it's probably more than expected.
“52 laps was very big for me, in terms of confidence level it's completely different compared to where I started in FP1 this weekend.
“I'm sure if I had one more qualifying it would be a little bit different. But it's too late, I don't have any more. I just have to do better in the next race.”
At the start Tsunoda initially had to settle for staying behind Lawson as he had to lift exiting Turn 2 to avoid hitting the man he had just swapped seats with.
However, he pressured Lawson over the lap and when the Racing Bulls driver covered the inside into Spoon Curve, he inevitably had a moment thanks to having to take the corner more tightly and ended up a sitting duck mid-corner, so Tsunoda was up to 13th.
The problem was, even though he was soon into DRS range of Pierre Gasly’s Alpine, Tsunoda couldn’t challenge because he lacked enough of a straightline speed advantage. The same thing happened in the second stint when Tsunoda undercut Gasly but then found himself stuck behind Fernando Alonso.
That was a legacy of the wing choice Tsunoda and Red Bull made for qualifying - leaving him on a bigger one with more downforce but more drag, while Verstappen went for a smaller wing and used it to great effect. And Tsunoda said he would do things differently if he could as he believes, having played it safe due to the disrupted practice sessions and the threat of rain for the race, he could have actually lived with the extra instability.
“I knew it's going to be tough for overtaking,” Tsunoda admitted. “I was expecting if, for example, tyre degradation is massive, it could be a really good situation, but degradation was even zero.
“To be honest after FP3 I was considering to go lower, as low as Max, but already until FP3 I didn't have much time because of tyres, red flags, whatever. And also we were changing a lot of set-ups. And I never had a consistent car, consistent laps.
“I thought, I just want to keep it the same car, to qualify and race, because there was a chance for the rain. I just wanted to have a consistent car.
“If I had exactly the same grand prix, I'd go a different way.”
Being stuck in dirty air meant Tsunoda’s pace was well off team-mate Verstappen’s, and it was a slightly scruffy race with a couple of errors. He was apologetic over the radio on the slowdown lap, but did say after the race he feels he has started positively, not negatively.
Team boss Christian Horner also leant in his direction after the race, saying Tsunoda has dialled himself into the team and car, and tipped his new driver to take a step forward in the coming races.
If a little generous on the surface, it’s a reasonable position to take. And a triple-header is the best way to do that, with next weekend's race in Bahrain and then Saudi Arabia a week after giving Tsunoda a chance to build immediate momentum.
"It's a good thing," Tsunoda said. "I don't think I started negative this weekend, at least positive, so I felt I had a good start, apart from the results.
"I'll just use this learning, the progress, the amount of speed I had throughout the week so far, and I just keep continuing.
"From Bahrain I'm expecting more, for sure more than this. I just have to push more."
