Yuki Tsunoda explains his radio call during F1 Hungarian GP, as a video of a spin emerge, while Pierre Gasly talks of Lap 1 push which hampered him to fight at the top.
For AlphaTauri’s Tsunoda, a seventh place finish in F1 Hungarian GP was a good drive, especially after the crash in practice. Of course, it got even better in light of Sebastian Vettel’s disqualification, as he would be sixth once the final result is published.
It was a great start from eighth at the initial start from Tsunoda, because the mayhem unfolding in front of him. The Japanese was in fact in the Top 5 and ran in the Top 10 pretty much throughout the day, whereas teammate Gasly had to fight through.
But tyre management came back to haunt Tsunoda after he was too hard on tyres early on. Towards the end there was a further frustration for him when Gasly had swapped places with him, but wasn’t pulling ahead sufficiently. The Japanese asked his team on the radio to ask the Frenchman to pull ahead as his dirty air was killing the tyres.
However, Gasly then pulled ahead sufficiently enough and the Japanese could maintain nominal enough pace. “I think the pace was okay, I would say, but I had to push after I changed the hard tyre and I killed the tyre quite in the beginning of the race,” said Tsunoda to TV media.
“The team made the right decision that we have to swap to the teammate because I haven’t had any pace because I just killed the tyre. So, I’m not frustrated about this call. I think there was a little bit of a misunderstanding with other people that I said in the radio please swap back but actually I didn’t say that, I said he was [doing] a mistake quite a lot in front of me and the gap was quite close to me and having dirty air and just kept killing the tyres.
“So, I just said if he [Gasly] doesn’t pull away from me I just say please swap back, well I mean but he after that he was able to make a gap and so I just have to maintain the pace and I’m able to put in P7 (P6), so quite good,” summed up Tsunoda, who had a good day in the end, even allowing for a self inflicted spin on Lap 63.
The spin was not shown on world feed but a video later emerged when F1 uploaded it. He had good enough gap to Nicholas Latifi, so he recovered without losing his place. On the radio, he noted that there was just no rear grip, much like his crash in practice.
Just ahead of him, of course, was his teammate. A good tidy drive after an impressive qualifying. However, Gasly got caught up in the Turn 1 mayhem, having had to take an evasive action, which dropped him from fifth to 14th because of it. He eventually fought back up to sixth, which stands as fifth for now, along with the late stop for fastest lap.
“To be honest, I don’t really know what to think because to start P5 probably the best position we can hope for,” said Gasly. “Almost got taken out in the incident in turn one, then we start last and finish P6 with the fastest lap, so its good, obviously looking at whats happened with all we think but it could have been better.
“I mean we were best of the rest in qualifying. In the race, I had a lot of fuel management for whatever reason, so we were never pushing, and I think we had the pace to be with the guys at the front but just too far being stuck at the start of the race behind the rest.
“So, a lot of positives but we lose a lot of points in the championship and not great, but I think it was out of our control so I can think we can be pleased to finish the race considering what happened at the start,” summed up Gasly.
Going into the summer break, AlphaTauri will be somewhat pleased – they are also the only team to have scored in every race in the first half. They were unlucky at the Hungarian GP start with Gasly. Nevertheless, the battle between them, Alpine and Aston Martin in the second part of the season should be interesting.
The story was written by Neil Farrell
Here’s the video of Yuki Tsunoda spinning: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.yuki-tsunodas-unseen-spin-in-closing-stages-of-2021-hungarian-grand-prix.1706973135053463623.html
