Yuki Tsunoda knew on the reconnaissance lap that the changes to start from pitlane in F1 Spanish GP didn’t work, as Andrea Kimi Antonelli rues bad end to triple-header.
After a tough Monaco round, Red Bull’s Tsunoda hoped for a better run in F1 Spanish GP at Barcelona. But it proved to be his worst outing with the senior outfit from the start of the weekend. Even though his car looked decent enough and he felt mostly good, the lap time never came to him.
He did complain about low grip level, but it didn’t hurt his balance by huge margin. He lacked bit of confidence to push but didn’t leave as much margin to qualify last. He said the team worked around every set-up, but nothing changed his feeling or brought lap time in the car.
He opted for a pitlane start by changing the rear wing, but it didn’t work 100% either. The safety car only added to his woes as any chance of points diminished after that. Post-race, Tsunoda noted that he knew that the parc ferme changes didn’t bring the desired results.
It is worth noting that he was not on same parts as Max Verstappen due to his Imola incident. “Unfortunately, not really, I mean I already felt from the lap to grid,” said Tsunoda to media. “Unfortunately we weren’t able to make a step that’s the level that we want.
“In the last safety car didn’t help to be honest, until then even though the pace was not the level we were looking at, compared to midfield it was alright and there was potential to score points, so that was a little bit of a shame. Probably, it was better, something that we can learn.
“The team fully backed me and helped in changing set-ups, but yeah, didn’t really feel much difference. Something we are planning for Canada, we will have to try. I am happy that they are doing that and made the effort to give me something that I want to try. It can’t get worse than Barcelona,” summed up Tsunoda, as he found small support from team boss Christian Horner.
He said that they pitted Tsunoda early despite the medium compound, because he was not making up places as was desired for his strategy to work. It was a DRS train basically. “Because at that point it was clear he wasn’t making any headway through traffic,” said Horner. “The best thing is to pit him, get him in clear air and let him try. That safety car screwed his race as well at the end.
“He would have probably been very close to a point by the end of the race. If you look at the trajectory that he was on and the degradations that the others were having, he was on the better tyre and had more pace than the cars ahead. We’ll go through it with Yuki back in the factory and try to unpick this weekend. It’s been a tough weekend for him from start to finish.”
Much like Tsunoda, Mercedes’ Antonelli had a bad end to his triple-header too. It was another retirement, but this time due a power unit issue. Until then, it was not looking extraordinary for the Italian as he lost places to be seventh, just ahead of the string of midfield cars.
It was another tough outing for the youngster all in all. “It was pretty lonely in the race, it was offset with the strategy,” said Antonelli to media. “On the medium, I felt quite decent to be honest, especially at the end I was having consistent pace and I was upset to finish off like this. Of course a really difficult triple-header on my side and now we’ll try to come back stronger in the next one.
“It was tricky out there with the hot temperature, much hotter than FP2, for example, when we did the long run. It was not easy out there but still with very good learning. It [the issue] was all of a sudden, I didn’t feel anything,” summed up Antonelli.
Here’s Yuki Tsunoda, Andrea Kimi Antonelli in Pirelli test
Here’s Max Verstappen on Charles Leclerc incident
Here’s Max Verstappen on George Russell incident
Here’s immediate reaction from Red Bull, Mercedes on Spanish GP
