Yuki Tsunoda says improving his performance in the final stage of qualifying is a “priority area” for him.
The Red Bull driver, who starts his fourth round for the team this weekend, has under-performed in his two Q3 appearances for them so far. He set quicker times in Q2 in each of the last two rounds.
He said his performance over a single flying lap is “definitely” an area he needs to work on.
“To be completely honest, in the last few races, I wasn’t able to put it all together in Q3,” he said. “I built up more through Q1 and Q2, and Q3 is certainly more of a push. But if you push slightly more than the car can handle – even 2% more than what the car wants – it just reacts super-differently to what I used to be used to.
“So far, I can’t really predict it yet. That will come with experience in the Red Bull, hopefully it’ll come naturally. I definitely haven’t been able to extract the performance in Q3.
“It’s something I need to work on. If I can qualify higher, there’s a better chance to score points and you can be more flexible with the team on strategy. So it’s definitely a priority area to work on.”
However Tsunoda feels he has made progress with the team’s car so far. “It just needs more time, I guess, to get used to it fully,” he said.
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“I’m happy with the progress so far. The confidence is there, but just when you push 100% on the limit in qualifying, that’s where you kind of face it for the first time. 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’ve experienced 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.”
Red Bull gave Tsunoda the opportunity to drive one of their older cars at Silverstone following the last race. However rain fell during the test and the team chose not to use up too much of the limited running it is allowed under new rules for 2025.
“I experienced the classic British weather,” rued Tsunoda. “It started damp and we didn’t bring any wet tyres, just because we didn’t want to waste any mileage for the driver TPC [Testing of Previous Cars] test. 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 it was still a cool experience.
“To be honest, it’s hard to feel the difference. 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 and make confusion, so I told them what I felt clearly, but otherwise it was still a good test for me to get some mileage.”
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