Yuki Tsunoda apologised to team after his odd crash in F1 Canadian GP, as Pierre Gasly admitted for them to be just slow.
For Gasly and Tsunoda, the AlphaTauri drivers had a disappointing weekend in Canada. For the Faenza based outfit, it has been a season of frustration for both drivers. In 2021, the Frenchman was a regular in Q3 and on a myriad of occasions, was in the top six on the grid on race day while the Japanese driver had a challenging rookie year, was re-signed for 2022 and finished the season strongly in Abu Dhabi with fourth place.
But for 2022, it has been a different scenario for both drivers. This weekend saw Tsunoda start 20th and run as high as 10th and in the points but on exiting the pits on cold tyres he went straight into the barrier and his day was done. An embarrassing exit and by his own admittance he pushed to hard too soon.
“I’ve already been to the garage to apologise to all the team, I just pushed too much on pit exit and unfortunately, I went into the wall,” said Tsunoda. “The pace was good, and we’d made a strong recovery up until that point, even if it was hard to overtake, so I’m disappointed with that ending.”
It was a big pity to finish the way that he did. If anything, it was a rookie mistake and of course he is no longer a rookie. “The pace was good, I think, to come back from FP2 when we didn’t have that much pace. We recovered from that,” said Tusnoda.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the garage, teammate Gasly finished in 14th place. A week on from Baku where he was an impressive fifth, his best result so far, it would appear that once more he has unfortunately taken a step backwards.
“We’re just way too slow so not a very entertaining day,” said Gasly. “Starting the race out of position, we thought we’d go for a different strategy, so we pitted a bit earlier, but it didn’t really make much of a difference. We were struggling a lot with grip, sliding around a lot in these conditions, and we just didn’t have the pace to fight in the top 10”.
For Gasly, 2021 as a season must seem like a long time ago, coupled with his victory at Monza in 2020. There was even a rumour at the beginning of 2022 that he would join Red Bull again in 2023 but with Sergio Perez signing for a further two seasons, that is now out the door.
For now though, the man from Rouen turns his attention to Silverstone, as well as this, he and the team are now back to basics looking for answers to the issues they had on Sunday last. “We will have to analyse everything, but objectively we were just too slow in the race,” said Gasly.
“Likewise, we didn’t get lucky with the Virtual Safety Car, but at the end of the day it wouldn’t have changed our end result that much. We need to use the gap now to work out what we could’ve done better, so we can arrive in Silverstone as best prepared as possible,” summed up Gasly.
Here’s Yuki Tsunoda apologising to team: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.2022-canadian-grand-prix-tsunoda-crashes-after-leaving-the-pits-and-triggers-a-safety-car.1736092289971744160.html