It’s only Yuki Tsunoda’s second race with Red Bull Racing at the F1 Bahrain GP.
Tsunoda had swapped seats with Liam Lawsonfollowing the race in Shanghai. After a challenging 12th place finish at his home grand prix in Suzuka for his first race, the Japanese driver made his first Q3 appearance for the Milton Kynes outfit in Bahrain. However, it is clear that he is still struggling to get used to his new RB21.
Tsunoda had barely made it past Q2 as the team opted to do only one flying lap, Alpine’s Jack Doohan who placed P11 was only 0.17s slower than the Red Bull. In Q3, Tsunoda clocked in a 1:31.303 after making a mistake in Turn 10 of his final Q3 lap.
Tsunoda adapting to Red Bull: A new team and car
When reflecting on the results, the Japanese driver spoke on how he’s adapting to the new team and the RB21.
“I’ll take it. Obviously, as a driver you want more, but considering what I had in practice, and it’s only my second race, I’ll still take it,” he explained.
“It’s just difficult. It’s not easy being in the window which this car operates, which is quite narrow. I’m trying lots of things to be in that window consistently. It’s natural that I’ll be up and down, which I had in free practice. I just won’t rush it, and progress step by step.
“Long run in P2 was not good but at the same time, the car is different as well. Also, the run I had then was not really amazing for myself, so I just have to tune it slightly more as a driver and also the car, to drive fast.
“But I have ok confidence, not great, ok confidence.”
Verstappen’s frustrations
But Tsunoda isn’t the only person struggling with the RB21. His senior teammate and reigning champion Max Verstappen also expressed his frustration towards the car this weekend. Verstappen ended the session in P7 after a relatively difficult afternoon.
The biggest issue he’s been facing is tyre grip, he’s also spoken up on how the team is currently unsure of what’s wrong. Making Red Bull’s problem seem much bigger.
“All weekend it has been difficult, just struggling on brake feel and stopping power basically. Besides that just also just a very difficult grip.
“Now, I feel that maybe the tyre grip that we are getting out of the car and that’s why also set-up wise we have thrown the car around a lot and nothing really seems to give you a clear direction. So I guess that also shows we are struggling also with other things.
“I have no idea how they [the extra set of hard tyres he has saved for the race] will perform. I think it will be quite high deg but also on the hard tyre you have quite low mechanical grip so naturally you will slide a bit more and I have no idea how that will work out. But at least it’s an option to have and then we’ll see what happens with it.”
