Yuki Tsunoda suffered his first crash as a Red Bull driver in practice for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix on Friday. Tsunoda clipped the inside wall on the entry to the final corner at the end of FP2.
The initial impact broke the steering arm, which meant he couldn’t avoid clouting the outside wall and wrecking the front-right corner of his car. Karun Chandhok says Tsunoda ‘did a Lando Norris’ after inadvertently emulating the McLaren driver’s 2023 incident.
It’s not the Japanese driver’s first incident in Jeddah. During the inaugural 2021 race, he collided with then-Aston Martin driver Sebastian Vettel.
However, it shouldn’t necessarily affect the rest of his weekend. Tsunoda only missed a few minutes of high-fuel running, and the repairs won’t be especially taxing for the Red Bull mechanics.
Yuki Tsunoda is approaching corner entries like Sergio Perez at Saudi Arabian Grand Prix
Speaking on his YouTube channel, former F1 team manager Peter Windsor pointed out that Tsunoda had been using a ‘weird’ technique at turn 27. He was apparently nudging the car to the right before swinging left.
Windsor is ‘amazed’ that Red Bull engineers didn’t flag up this issue in the break between the two Friday sessions. He thinks it contributed to the evening shunt.
Sergio Perez would occasionally take a similar approach, possibly in the hope of opening up the corner. But Windsor reckons it unsettles the ground-effect cars.
Tsunoda thinks he can beat Max Verstappen once he’s fully adapted to the idiosyncrasies of the Red Bull. Perhaps this was a sign he’s still not comfortable behind the wheel.
“We saw Yuki going into that corner in FP1 this morning, and he was the only driver who does one of those weird, Sergio Perez-like turning right a little bit on the steering before you then turn left,” Windsor said.
“I don’t know whether it’s a security blanket. It’s really weird, it’s not as if he’s a rally driver. He did exactly the same thing when he had the shunt in FP2.
“I would be willing to bet that the reason he misjudged that and got that understeer is because he went slightly to the right before he went left. I’m amazed the engineers didn’t get onto him about that in the break between the two sessions.
“With these cars, the last thing you want is weight transfer one way and then another if you can avoid it. And Yuki was doing that.”
How Helmut Marko reacted to Yuki Tsunoda crash at Saudi Arabian Grand Prix
Guenther Steiner believes Red Bull will keep Tsunoda for 2026, citing a lack of compelling alternatives. There is an appreciation within the team that the RB21 is difficult to drive.
Perez racked up a huge damage bill last year, affecting Red Bull’s development budget. Tsunoda will want to avoid comparisons to the Mexican, who lost his way in his final year at Milton Keynes.
Motorsport Netherlands journalist Ronald Vording spoke to Helmut Marko in the paddock on Friday and shared his reaction to Tsunoda’s mistake.
“Marko said ‘you would expect something like that in a lap on the limits, a qualifying simulation, and not in the long runs’… That doesn’t change the fact that the Red Bull management was quite happy with Tsunoda today. The pace was there.”
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