Yuki Tsunoda realised his Formula 1 dream when he was announced to replace Liam Lawson at his home Grand Prix in Japan.
Red Bull swapped the two drivers after a difficult start to the year for Lawson, who could not match Max Verstappen in qualifying or races. Tsunoda is seen as an experienced and safe pair of hands for Red Bull, having already done four seasons at sister team Racing Bulls.
The RB21 is a difficult car to drive and Tsunoda got a taste of what Lawson was struggling with during the Japanese GP weekend, but he largely coped well by staying within a healthy margin of Verstappen’s time in practice.
Red Bull requires Tsunoda to be at least three-tenths off Verstappen, as they want him to score points towards their ambitions to win the Constructors’ Championship.
While Tsunoda could only manage P12 in the race, he admitted afterwards that he made one change to his Red Bull that increased the gulf in performance between him and Verstappen when speaking on the F1 Nation podcast.
Yuki Tsunoda admits he made change to Red Bull that impacted his confidence
There were a number of disruptions throughout the Japanese GP, notably when the grass caught fire on the outside of the track from sparks blowing onto the dry patches.
None of the teams were able to complete a proper race run in FP2, which put them into a bit of an unknown for the race. For Tsunoda, he went a different direction to Verstappen in a bid to find some consistency.
He has later admitted that it was one part of his weekend that he would like to redo, having failed to break into the top 10 places on race day.
“Until FP2, [we had] lots of red flags and I wasn’t able to drive properly with such a limited time. I was already doing a lot of setup changes from FP1 to FP2. Already FP2 to FP3, I did a massive change as well. I started to have a bit of confusion there. And in the end, I just wanted to have a bit more consistency,” said Tsunoda.
“So even though I knew it was going to be a compromise in the dry, especially in the race, I just wanted to have a bit of consistency. And I felt at that point that for qualifying at least, I had a bit more confidence to extract performance from the package. So I mean, if I had one more qualifying, I would do a different approach. But I think it was the best choice I could have done in that scenario.”
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Is Yuki Tsunoda any better than Liam Lawson?
Tsunoda’s lap times were immediately close to Verstappen early in the weekend, but as it progressed it was clear that the Dutchman’s prior car knowledge was paying off.
It’s unsurprising that the Japanese driver would want to chase consistency over ultimate lap time, especially considering the chances of having a crash are high around Suzuka.
The challenging wind conditions made things a lot harder in qualifying, with Verstappen able to deal with it using the trimmed-out wing.
Red Bull were perhaps not expecting to be the outright quickest and while there was more time to come from McLaren, they showed their pace during the important parts of the weekend. Tsunoda missed out in these critical areas and will need to work on the operational side if he wants to make the difference where it matters for Red Bull.
