Weeks after Yuki Tsunoda emerged as a breakout star in the Bahrain GP, the Japanese F1 racer is now working to regain confidence under the watchful eyes of Franz Tost.
Tsunoda caused a stir in Bahrain GP, when he arrived at the scene, but post that, it all came down on him as incidents and lack of pace started to hurt him. The dip in performance led Red Bull to intervene and take some steps.
Subsequently, Tsunoda was asked to move from England to Italy, closer to the AlphaTauri F1 base in Faenza, under the watchful eyes of team boss Tost. They are not staying in the same building, but see each other daily at the factory, which is more than enough.
The key point is for Tsunoda to connect with his team on a regular basis face-to-face, so that he can regain confidence. Speaking about the move, Tost relayed his new schedule. “It’s a gift to go from England to Italy,” started the AlphaTauri chief.
“Beautiful weather, fantastic kitchen, nice people and, apart from this, he has the possibility to work close together with the team, with the engineers because he still has to learn a lot and, he always wanted to come to Italy, but during the winter months it was decided he should stay in England and now he is in Italy.
“He’s living there and he enjoys it and we are happy to have him close to us because then we have everything better under control. The daily routine is quite easy. He has to be in the gym at around 9:00 until 9:30-10:00, then from 10:30-11:30-12:00 he is together with the engineers.
“In the early afternoon he has an English lesson then once more together with the engineers and then he’s allowed to go once more into the gym for another two hours. And then he should go to sleep. What’s important here is the cooperation with the engineers and with the trainers.
“It is because they do most of the work and so far everything works well, Yuki is happy. How everything will come to and end, we will then see,” summed up Tost, as the Austrian explained the dip in performance from his side is momentary, as they can see that the Japanese F1 driver has in him to surge ahead.
It is just the lack of experience and confidence dent, which has caught him out. “It’s not so complicated,” said Tost. “It’s the usual way you have to work with newcomers in F1. Yuki shows a fantastic natural speed. Once more, as I said before, coming to a new race track with this high level which is currently in Formula 1 being shown from all the drivers it’s not so easy to be in the first 10 or qualifying three.
“But I am convinced that Yuki will show us some fantastic races this year and I am also quite sure he will learn very fast. The question is not how much work, the question is how fast we can bring him forward, how fast he is adapting everything and how fast he can transfer this to the cockpit and the driving and so far I must say he is really, really doing a fantastic job.
“We all have now the incidents in mind, for example in Imola, yeah, but we forget that in sector one and sector two he had green sector times, he was so fast. Of course when you are so fat the risk is higher that you crash. But he is learning out of this, hopefully at least, and therefore you will see on race tracks that he knows that he will show a fantastic performance,” summed up Tost.
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