Tsunoda reveals surprising factor in his current struggles with the Red Bull RB21
On the back of his debut race with Red Bull, Yuki Tsunoda has revealed that communications issues have also contributed to his initial struggles behind the wheel of the RB21.
Yuki Tsunoda made his debut with Red Bull at last weekend's Japanese Grand Prix where he replaced Liam Lawson who was forced to leave the Milton Keynes-based outfit after just two races into the season.
While the Sagamihara-born driver made a promising impression during practice session of the Suzuka weekend, he struggled in qualifying and ended the race outside the points scoring positions. Reflecting on his debut weekend, Tsunoda likened the Red Bull RB21 to “a science room with lots of chemicals” that sometimes “goes good” and other times “goes bad”.
While the Japanese racer looks to tame the car at this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix, he has had a difficult opening day at Sakhir. Tsunoda found himself blocked in the pit lane by Williams driver Alex Albon, but instead of braking opted to overtake – something the stewards had a look at. He got away with a reprimand but then could not extract much pace from the car at all under the lights and wound up way down the order.
As for the pace, he finished ninth in the opening practice, but he struggled to a good balance in the second one-hour session, ended up way down the order in P18, sixth tenths of a second adrift of his team-mate Max Verstappen.
Reflecting on his day, Tsunoda noted: “Today was a bit of learning, we ran different set-up across the cars to see what the performance looked like. But overall, I would say the second session was a bit messy for me, with being able to put it together.
"here were also some communication struggles on radio between my race engineer and me, that’s all just part of the learning process and understanding one another properly, it’s only the fifth session together since I jumped in the car.
Elaborating on what he meant by miscommunications, Tsunoda indicated that his communication with his new race engineer Richard Wood needs to be "cleaner" after having had a fairly heated discussion about tyre temperatures, lap time targets, and steering wheel settings during practice.
"For now, there is some struggling, but at the same time a lot will come from cleaner communication. I think if we can clean up the communication then it’ll make operational things a lot smoother, warm-up, the switches etc. and that would bring lap times. Maybe Woody and I need to go out tonight and get to know each other, with my Japanese English and his Scottish English! It would be a fun night.
"It’s hard to tell where we are at the moment, I feel there is potential, but it has been hard to extract it. It wasn’t the finest Friday ever, I hope the rest of the weekend is better, I have to be better. I am still feeling optimistic and I am sure we will change a lot of things overnight," the Japanese driver noted.
