Speaking after what proved to be a difficult F1 Las Vegas GP weekend, Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda explains he has been plagued by bad luck and feels as though everything has been against him.
Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda endured a pointless Las Vegas GP last weekend, with the Japanese driver finishing P12 following a double McLaren disqualification. The Red Bull driver’s woes started on Saturday with a difficult wet qualifying session.
Following the session, team principal Laurent Mekies admitted the team had made an error with Tsunoda’s tyre pressures. Speaking after the Grand Prix, Tsunoda highlighted qualifying as a key factor in his disappointing result.
“I want to know why this thing was such basic stuff and was by far out of the window.” Tsunoda said in the print media pen following the Grand Prix. “I’m not talking small or anything, so not much chance to be competitive with that.
“My thing is also I think it was avoidable, but we couldn’t avoid or at least improve in the inner section, so it’s something that we have to look at. We just literally threw it away.”
The Japanese driver was then forced to start from the pitlane for Sunday’s Grand Prix. Red Bull elected to make setup changes and take additional power unit components to benefit Tsunoda. Tsunoda however, felt the setup had gone in the wrong direction, despite noting the benefits from the power unit.
“We changed a couple of things, and also it wasn’t in the right direction to be honest,” he admitted. At least we changed the engine and something to the core for the next few Grand Prix.
“I think [the power unit is] performing better than what we were seeing before. We have to qualify properly, but it seems like it.”
Things went further downhill in the beginning of the Grand Prix as Tsunoda was caught out by a safety car. Tsunoda pitted following lap 1 both the change to hard tyres as well as to avoid dirty air.
His progress was scuppered however as the early virtual safety car brought him back behind the pack. While he believes he had the pace to secure points, he pinpoints time lost due to the safety car as a defining factor of his Las Vegas GP.
“I mean, I lost so much time with that.” Tsunoda recalled. “The thing is, the [Virtual] Safety Car came in right after I pitted, so no idea. What we were trying to achieve with that was trying to get out of dirty air, but Safety Car came in and multiple people just rejoined in front of me.
“There were no points, so it feels like everything so far is going against me, and good luck and everything. I don’t like the word luck, but this weekend feels like it’s really bad luck. It’s a shame and frustrating that I couldn’t be able to use my pace I had until qualifying, just throwing away.”
Despite the difficult and disappointing result, Tsunoda highlighted his performance earlier in the weekend. He noted his strong showing on Friday as an indicator of his true pace. While he was disappointed by the result, he took the positive that his pace is improving in the Red Bull.
“At least I’ve shown multiple times until qualifying, from FP1 to FP3, every session, performance run, I was fighting quite strongly against Max and multiple times ahead of him. It was something that they didn’t see and I didn’t have as well for a long time.
“I think it’s something that I should take as positive. The pace was amazing there.
“The incredible thing about Max is he will bring another level into the qualifying, but also I had confidence as well, more than any Grand Prix. Yeah, very shame. Positive is the pace is getting there, improving, so I’ll do the same after.”
