The trials of an F1 rookie: Yuki Tsunoda on his early season struggles

“After qualifying at Imola, I backed off a little bit in Q1 and lost confidence in how I pushed. Now I’m going back a little to the Imola way and need to push more from the beginning, building the confidence every race weekend. I’m not feeling very relaxed about that and realise that I need to build up slowly, because in F1, if you have a small or big snap, it’s very easy to crash.”

According to Tsunoda, AlphaTauri has taken a matter-of-fact approach to his teething troubles. It’s not about multiplying the pressure on him but more a question of highlighting the areas for improvement. You can see it even in the way he conducts himself out of the car, with his initial youthful exuberance tempered and a more worldly character being carved out by his experience.

And experience, or the lack thereof, is his main problem. Selecting when to attack and when to consolidate is a key skill of any elite athlete, and it can take drivers years to strike that balance. Speed can be innate to an extent, but it must be refined.

At Monaco, for example, Tsunoda promised a steady approach and accepted that you “can’t go full send immediately” but then cost himself significant practice time by crashing. Mind you, he wasn’t the only driver to hit the wall exiting the Swimming Pool section, so this could be easily shrugged off as a rookie error.

What happened on at the Spanish Grand Prix qualifying, where he yelled “I can’t f***ing believe this car” over the radio, having failed to reach Q3, then followed that up with an extraordinary complaint during a post-session TV interview suggesting that his car might not be of the same standard as his team-mate’s?

Tsunoda is generally unapologetic for his agitation over the radio, but he’s contrite regarding this situation. “What I said in Barcelona was unacceptable,” he admits. “It was ridiculous radio. The only thing I wanted to say was a bad excuse. I feel a lot of regret. Sometimes I get really frustrated, because I try to improve quickly and want the result.”

Tsunoda’s radio chatter certainly took his team aback during his early test outings last year. There were concerns that he wasn’t ready for F1 and that Honda’s desire to have its proteÃgeà in the car in the final season before it quits F1 led to a premature promotion. Those concerns were eased by progress in testing before the season reawakened the doubts.

However, as Tsunoda himself has said, F1 is meant to be difficult. Most rookies go through some version of these struggles; it’s how effectively they learn from them that matters. And if Tsunoda can do that and join the dots of his peaks of performance, he has the speed to make an impact.

His drive from as low as 17th on his debut in Bahrain to ninth for two championship points was excellent, showing a combination of impressive pace and decisive passing moves.

At Imola he was on course for points before spinning while rather audaciously trying to overtake Sir Lewis Hamilton, and in Spain he pulled off a great around-the-outside pass on Williams man George Russell before his race was curtailed by an engine-related problem. Then, despite dropping two places on the first lap following a late-race restart, he finished a creditable seventh in Azerbaijan.

These moments show the driver that Tsunoda can be. What’s more, it’s not simply a question of him always being ultra-attacking and sometimes pulling it off: he has shown real restraint at times, notably on opening laps, where he admits that he hasn’t been attacking enough.

On top of that, he has the usual challenges that face any rookies. Given that 39-year-old two-time champion Fernando Alonso admits he’s struggling to get the capricious tyres into their optimum operating windows in qualifying, it’s hardly a surprise that it’s proving difficult for Tsunoda. (And yes, he was just 10 months old when Alonso made his F1 debut with the Faenza team in 2001.)

Then there’s understanding the sensitivity of F1 cars. Here, every aerodynamic surface is worked to the limit, so wind conditions can dramatically change the feel of the car from corner to corner.

“There’s the tyre thing, but the biggest thing to learn is the wind effect,” says Tsunoda when offered the opportunity to blame Pirelli for his qualifying difficulties.

“In F1 especially, the wind effect is huge. Every corner is difficult: if it’s a headwind in one session and a tailwind in the next, the car feels completely different. I have to adapt, and now I’m in a learning phase. I just have to get used to it.”

Again, the matter-of-factness of Tsunoda shines through. While it might be tempting to assume his directness and refusal to make excuses is little more than mirroring the criticism that he has received from the likes of Marko, it’s clear that Tsunoda buys into it. Now that he understands how steep the learning curve really is, his capacity to learn from those mistakes will ultimately decide his fate as an F1 driver.

There’s genuine ability and promise in Tsunoda, and considering that this year’s AlphaTauri car is good enough to fight for top-10 finishes regularly, his results should improve. While the pre-season excitement was premature and the early races of his career on the whole best described as character-building, there’s plenty more to come from him.

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