Yuki Tsunoda has no plans to relocate to United Kingdom from Italy, as he expands on qualifying slip which is affecting his overall performance.
When he joined Visa Cash App RB, the then boss Franz Tost took Tsunoda under his hands and called him to stay in Italy near the Faenza factory. It was done to being discipline in the Japanese driver’s programme, when he was struggling to showcase absolute performance.
He has been living in Italy since. Even though he has joined Red Bull now, he has no plans to relocate to the United Kingdom to be closer to the Milton Keynes base. “No, I haven’t, and so far I’m not planning to,” said Tsunoda. “I think I’ve been enough in the UK. I don’t think there’s much benefit. I have more benefits living in Italy rather than… yeah.
“I mean, healthy, living next to him. Yeah. I just feel, you know, like… unfortunately, when I was living in Milton Keynes, it was during quarantine, so I didn’t have the best time in the UK. That didn’t help for sure. But with this kind of Formula 1 schedule, when you have downtime, it’s very important that you have a house where you can be comfortable with in order to reset your mind.
“So far, Italy is allowing me to reset and I feel very comfortable. I’m happy with Italy. I’m happy to go to Milton Keynes for simulator sessions or whatever,” summed up Tsunoda, who noted that the RB19 TPC test between Saudi Arabia and Miami didn’t prove to be as beneficial due to the weather in Silverstone.
He drove some bit in the dry, but it wasn’t enough to understand all of it. “I experienced the classic British weather – started damp and we didn’t bring any wet tyres, just because we didn’t want to waste any mileage for the driver TPC test,” said Tsunoda. “So we waited quite a long time for it to dry up. Unfortunately, we got a bit of an issue at the end of the day as well.
“So in the end, we didn’t drive much, but still a cool experience. To be honest, it’s hard to feel the difference, right? It was completely different conditions and completely different corner characteristics compared to previous races that I’ve raced. Also, I didn’t want to give stupid feedback to make confusion, so I told them what I felt clearly, but otherwise, still a good test for me to get some mileage.
“In terms of learning, maybe like just naturally. Maybe in terms of limits – those things just naturally come into my brain and muscle memory. But so far in terms of understanding about the set-up – because it was just really, really limited time – we wanted to do lots of changes to the set-up but just couldn’t manage to finish those.
“It finished more towards the engineering side – what they wanted to try. So to be honest, maybe in terms of car set-up, not really. But hopefully I have a lot of movements going on with the car and I’m not always there – I’m just there,” summed up Tsunoda, who expanded on the qualifying performance that he is finding it difficult to adapt. He adds on getting used to his new race engineer as well.
“I’m happy with the progress so far,” continued Tsunoda. “The confidence is quite there, but just when you push 100% on the limit in qualifying, that’s where you kind of face it for the first time, right? Because you don’t push 100% until then. The starting point is always slightly below where I want to be or where I used to start with in FP1, so it takes a bit more time to build up on new tracks.
“In qualifying, most of the time so far I experience new behaviour from the car and I’m not always able to cope with it. I wouldn’t say the car is super difficult – it just needs more time to define where the limit is. I’ll say it’s not complicated in the sense of trying to drive around, but it’s still not easy, for sure. In VCARB the car was a bit more lenient and forgiving with any directions. The Red Bull has a sharper, narrower window where it performs.
“It’s not easier than VCARB, but better than I thought initially when I jump into Red Bull. This is the first time after joining Formula 1 [that I’m in a different car]. For four years I drove the same car and knew how to set it up and where the limit was. Now, I just naturally didn’t have to think about it before, but now, in terms of set-ups.
“The set-up I tried a couple of time in Suzuka that I thought would be good, just didn’t work out – even when in the car, the balance felt good, the lap time didn’t reflect it. So that needs to come from experience, and sometimes you just have to accept the difficulties of the car. Like, if it feels like a lot of understeer or oversteer, but lap time is good, probably stick to that direction.
“It’s a different approach. I’m learning as much as possible. The team is helping a lot with those direction. I just have to get used to it. But the limit, I just still don’t know yet exactly. Like in Q3 in Saudi, I pushed a bit more and had a massive snap, which I didn’t expect. It will get there.
“I just try to keep my head down and slowly build up. Even with the general environment [within the team], me and my engineer – he’s Scottish, so a mix of Scottish English and my Japanese English – it’s a bit interesting. Those things just need more time to blend in,” summed up Tsunoda.
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