Yuki Tsunoda’s impressive form may have gone under the radar, given AlphaTauri’s lack of a competitive car.
Photo credit: Red Bull Content Pool
The Japanese driver has delivered consistent results so far, including back-to-back P10 finishes in Australia and Azerbaijan. His consistency has paid dividends, keeping AlphaTauri ahead of Williams in the Constructors’ championship. Tsunoda is currently P16 in the Drivers’ standings, having outperformed his teammate, Nyck de Vries, in all of the rounds so far.
Although he fell short of scoring points in Miami, ultimately losing out to Haas’s Kevin Magnussen, Tsunoda, speaking to the media after the race, admitted he is “pretty happy” with his performance.
“I think I was really close to the point, so obviously a shame, but pretty happy with my performance.
“A driver needs to extract the performance as much as possible from the car. So it’s good that I’m able to definitely extract the performance every race, more than last year.”
“Last time I [finished] P10, so I have to keep working like this.
“We didn’t really have upgrades [in Miami], we did a small change. We gotta have hopefully big updates at Imola next, so hopefully that will work well.”
Having qualified P17, Tsunoda started the race on the hard tyre, which offered optimal performance. Not having done any long runs on the hards during the free practice sessions, Tsunoda admitted he “didn’t expect it would have good pace, to be honest.”
He also spoke about the discrepancy between the car’s performance in qualifying and its race pace: “It’s kind of a trend of AlphaTauri, sometimes when the qualifying is bad the race is good. Obviously we have to find out why we are good, but it’s really pretty surprising.”
Asked if he’s looking forward to the Faenza-based team’s upcoming home race in Imola, Tsunoda replied, “Yeah, definitely. We’ll see how it goes.”
