Yuki Tsunoda’s fine start to the 2024 F1 season continued at Suzuka last weekend as he became the first Japanese driver since Kamui Kobayashi to score points at their home race. Kobayashi secured a memorable pole in his Sauber 12 years ago.
The P10 finish for Tsunoda certainly did not come easily after making Q3 on Saturday. He had to fend off Lance Stroll following a brilliant stop by the RB F1 crew saw him lead a gaggle of 5 cars out of the pits on lap 23. A clutch pass on Nico Hülkenberg in the esses with 21 laps to go was vital as well.
Asked to assess Tsunoda’s performance, Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner was pleased for the Japanese driver.
“Yuki did a very good job. So to score a point, the first Japanese driver in 12 years, it’s great for him, great for Honda, good for the V-CARB team. So, pleased for him.”
Unfortunately for Daniel Ricciardo, his miserable start to the season continued as he crashed out on the opening lap of the race following contact with Alex Albon.
Horner has managed both drivers as Red Bull boss in the past and believes it was purely a racing incident.
“I’ve only seen one replay of it but it looked like Daniel was looking to the left, Alex is to the right, it’s a sort of racing incident.
“It’s a brutal place to go off and thankfully both of them were okay. But from what I saw, difficult to apportion blame.”
Since returning to the sport at the Hungarian Grand Prix last year, Ricciardo trials Tsunoda 3-8 in the overall qualifying head-to-head and is 6-22 down in points scored. It’s 0-4 and 0-7 regarding the qualifying and points fight battle.
While race pace has generally been strong at the start of this campaign for the driver from Perth, qualifying has proven to be extremely difficult as he is yet to outqualify Tsunoda.
Nonetheless, Japan was much better, with the 8-time Grand Prix winner missing out on Q3 by just over half a tenth to his teammate.
Horner is convinced Ricciardo just needs one good result to get his season going.
“Daniel’s a big boy, he’s been around the block, he knows how things work.
“And I think that he just needs to get a good result in the bag and then the smile will return.
“His teammate is delivering and that naturally then puts pressure on you. But he’s been there before, I’m sure he’ll bounce back.”
Next up is China — Ricciardo took a memorable win there in 2018 during his time at Red Bull Racing.
