Yuki Tsunoda says Isack Hadjar didn’t make his life easy in F1 Miami GP, as he talks about scoring points but with feeling of wanting more.
Considering the results of the second Red Bull car since last season, Tsunoda qualifying in the Top 10 and scoring in both sprint and main races, is welcome news. But finishing far off teammate Max Verstappen remains a cause of concern, especially in qualifying trim.
Tsunoda has managed to get to the grips of Red Bull – much better than Liam Lawson. But he is still facing new things in the car. He managed to score well in Miami in the sprint race and hung on to 10th in the main race after 5s penalty for speeding in pitlane almost cost him that.
He had a race against his former teammate Hadjar in the Visa Cash App RB car, who was doing qualifying laps mostly. There were times when the Frenchman got under the 5s mark, but too many mistakes eventually aided Tsunoda to hang on by 0.168s margin in the end.
“Certainly my old team mate didn’t make my life easier,” said Tsunoda. “[In the] last 10 laps he picked up pace quite a lot and I was pushing enough, and on top of it he came back. That was really tough, but I just got to go what I’ve got to do and I maximised my pace. Obviously a bit unnecessarily from myself that made my life much more difficult with the five seconds.”
He feels better in the car but he wants more. Even though Red Bull didn’t have as much pace in Miami, he wants to be closer to Verstappen. “It is all right but P10 is obviously not the place I wanted to finish,” continued Tsunoda. “At the same time, I’ll take it after the sprint race where I was able to finish P6 – with penalties ahead – but, I think as a team in this race with Max as well, it is not just me that I struggled, as a team we didn’t have pace at all.
“So, it is something that we will have to look through. At least on myself, the confidence in the car is slowly building up and also understanding about the car as well. Max is already on the limit that the car can handle, I am sure myself, this is my fourth race, so there’s a lot more room that I can unlock myself. I’ll focus on that in the future.”
On Hadjar’s side, he is frustrated with the results but he far happy to be in the contention for points than fall away in the races. “I had the gap difference live, and I just gave it everything, but it was not really enough,” he said. “One tenth [of a second] over 25 laps or more on the hard, I don’t know how many laps we did, but it was quite a lot.
“It was definitely a tenth in all of these laps. Yuki may have made a few mistakes on his side. More importantly, I feel like I made too many that cost me the top 10. Throwing a tenth here and there over 30 laps is easy to do, and that’s what I did on that last lap. I knew I was within five seconds. It was a clearly qualifying battle with him. I just wanted it too much and I made a few mistakes.”
“Yeah [it is frustrating] but it is a good thing. It is good to fail to get to Top 10 and showing pace than being nowhere near the Top 10. I wait until I jump back in the car. Before that, it’s just painful. Overall, we nailed the strategy, the pit stop was good. It was well executed but [as I said], I made a few mistakes,” summed up Hadjar.
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