Sprint Qualifying at the F1 Chinese GP saw Racing Bulls drivers Yuki Tsunoda and Isack Hadjar secure P8 and P15 respectively, with Hadjar making an exit in SQ2 after a snap in turns one and two forced him to abort his lap.
His teammate Tsunoda, however, benefitted from Hadjar’s early exit thanks to a slipstream from his teammate. He reached the final stage of sprint qualifying and ended the session best-of-the-rest behind drivers from the top four teams.
Tsunoda “very happy” with his position
Tsunoda experienced a disappointing end to his race last season in China, where a collision with Kevin Magussen caused him to retire on lap 27.
When speaking to F1TV after sprint qualifying today, though, he seemed to have banished these memories completely:
“Last year, these things I’ve forgotten already. For me, it’s a completely new race week. My mind is more coming into the new track.”
Tsunoda was the fastest driver outside the top four teams, and while he expressed positivity with his result, he felt that there was still something missing from the Racing Bulls’ performance:
“Happy with the result, obviously, how we came out. Still I would say we could have done probably a couple things better in terms of set-up. Didn’t feel 100% able to extract performance from the car. We have to look through it, but I’m very happy.
“Shame for Isack but at the same time he gave a nice tow to me in Q2 so that helped. It was a good team effort.”
Tyre degradation has been a topic of conversation in the paddock since last weekend in Australia. General consensus seems to have determined that McLaren is the only team who has truly mastered the art of tyre preservation.
However, when asked if tyre degradation would be a concern during tomorrow’s sprint, Tsunoda took a ‘anything could happen’ kind of approach:
“To be honest, it’s the kind of track that’s quite high energy so it can be [graining on] either side; it can be front, it can be rear, any side. We are kind of more in the centre. Sometimes it can be front, sometimes it can be rear. Let’s see tomorrow.”
Tyre troubles for Hadjar
His teammate Isack Hadjar, on the other hand, stated that the cause for his snap going into turns one and two was a combination of tyre degradation and overambition:
“It’s the battle we have [had] since this morning with the car. I think everyone out there is really struggling here. It’s really tough on the tyres on the entry and they just overheat throughout the corner.
“I knew I had only one lap in SQ2 and overdid it because I knew to go to SQ3 I had to put a good lap in and it was just a bit too much.”
Despite this mishap, Hadjar shared his teammate’s opinion that the car showed strong pace compared with the year before. At the 2024 Chinese Grand Prix, Tsunoda qualified P19 and then Racing Bulls driver Daniel Ricciardo qualified P14 – a stark contrast to today’s result.
“SQ1 was really strong,” said Hadjar who was the quicker Racing Bulls driver in that session. “I felt really really good and it’s definitely an improvement from last year. We are quite close to the top guys. It’s just a shame.”
That said, he also pointed out that issues need to be addressed by the team going into the rest of the weekend:
“It’s still training for tomorrow. The big qualifying is tomorrow so we need to understand what went wrong but it seems like we have a decent car.”
