Yuki Tsunoda’s first day as a Red Bull Racing driver ended with him 18th on the timesheets with a two-second pace deficit to Max Verstappen, but any similarity to predecessor Liam Lawson’s struggles was purely superficial.
The red flags in FP2 made that session unrepresentative, and you must look to FP1 where Tsunoda lapped just 0.107s off team-mate Max Verstappen for a more positive, and accurate, indication of how promising his day was.
The comparison to predecessor Lawson was stark. Two weeks ago, in China, I watched trackside at Turn 3 and it was immediately obvious that Lawson was going to have a tough weekend and lacked confidence in the car.
Today, having followed Tsunoda’s two sessions onboard, the prospects for the second Red Bull are far more encouraging.
Tsunoda looks relatively confident, just as he promised he would be with his pre-event comments about his experience driving last year’s car in Abu Dhabi and this year’s car in the simulator. And given he talked after FP2 about wanting to build up more confidence, that indicates there’s still plenty to come.
“FP1 was better than expected, a good start for myself,” said Tsunoda. “And FP2 I didn’t set a [representative] laptime. I think lots of work to do, something that we have to look through [the] data [to understand], in FP2 more. Overall it’s OK, I just have to build up the confidence more.”
First and foremost, today was all about first acclimatising and then dialling himself into the car. And as Red Bull team principal Christian Horner explained after FP1, Tsunoda ticked all the boxes early on.
“It was certainly a good start for Yuki, settling into the car pretty well,” Horner said. “[It’s] obviously quite a different feel, probably, to what he’s used to but I thought he settled in, he gave very good feedback.”
In FP1, his best lap came on his first flying lap on the second set of softs used, but he was set to improve on his second attempt, but misjudged his braking for the chicane and went very wide.
That ruined the lap, but on the run out of 130R he was neck and neck with Verstappen. And it’s important to note that Horner confirmed they were “both on identical engine modes”, meaning Tsunoda didn’t have any power advantage.
Crucially, Tsunoda made a positive impression with his clear communication with the team. He worked through various car tweaks in terms of differential settings and brake balance, taking a conservative approach in the fast corners, particularly early on, but quickly pushing the slower corners.
Early on, he struggled for traction off the slow turns. As the session progressed, it became clear that instability in the middle of the entry phase was a problem.
That’s to be expected, and rather than falling into the trap of becoming more conservative, a fate that often befell Perez and Lawson, he lived with it, recognising a need to refine how he deals with it and transitions into the mid-corner phase as the weekend goes on if he’s to maximise the performance of the car.
The main differences with Verstappen in FP1 were in his performance in the high-speed first sector, although on that lost lap on his second set of softs he was close to his team-mate as he continued to build the speed.
The other was that Tsunoda struggled more with the rear tyres on his mini long-run late in the session, which meant a bigger pace deficit to Verstappen.
FP2 should have offered the chance to work at that, and began promisingly with Tsunoda reporting after his first push lap on mediums that the “balance was good, a bit more stable than FP1”.
That’s despite struggling with front brake-locking at Turn 11. However, the four red flags meant he completed only two other flying laps, both late on while on heavy fuel. He also came close to completing a second push lap on that first set of mediums on which his pace was better.
However, in those FP2 laps, just as in FP1, that slow corner late-entry instability was evident.
Prior to the weekend, there was talk of how Tsunoda hadn’t struggled with what he called the “trickiness” of this car in the simulator, which is generally down to a combination of a strong front end along with the need to manipulate the car precisely in the braking and turn-in phase both to make the most of this and ensure the car rotates as required mid-corner.
This is extremely difficult to achieve. Tsunoda admitted that the car didn’t feel as it had done in the simulator, with the car proving a little more extreme than anticipated.
“It's a bit different to the simulator, what I felt, maybe a little bit more than I expected in terms of car feeling,” said Tsunoda. “I knew it was going to be a bit different in the real car and it was a little bit more exaggerated and a bit more tricky.”
While Tsunoda sounded a little downbeat as he delivered his verdict, that’s to be expected.
FP2 was a crucial opportunity for him to build his understanding of the car and was largely ruined by the red flags, on top of which he evidently wants to work at building further understanding of the peculiarities of the car. And you wouldn’t expect anything less because Tsunoda has set high standards for himself this weekend and knows that, despite FP1 going well, there’s still much to be done.
Tsunoda may be ambitious, but he’s certainly not complacent. And given Verstappen spoke of not being that confident in the car today, it would be concerning if Tsunoda felt the car was perfect.
That’s an attitude and approach that will stand Tsunoda in good stead. However, the overall verdict of his Friday can only be a positive one.
On an unforgiving circuit, he looked confident enough to extract pace from the car, communicated clearly with his engineer and made methodical progress that was only hindered by the constant red flags in FP2. That’s as good a start as any driver pitched into such a difficult situation could be expected to produce.
It's still early days and a decent Friday only counts for anything if Tsunoda can turn it into a good qualifying performance tomorrow. But if nothing else, the 24-year-old has proved he’s not over-awed by the pressure, fearful of the car and has shown that he immediately has a decent turn of pace.
The tougher challenge is yet to come, but so far Tsunoda has justified the faith Red Bull has belatedly put in him.
