Yuki Tsunoda said his heavy crash in qualifying for the last race at Imola showed he has much to learn about how to get the best out of Red Bull’s car over a single flying lap.
His high-speed crash at Tamburello occured on his first flying lap in Q1 last weekend. The damage was so extensive Red Bull had to replace his survival cell which meant he had to start the race from the pit lane.
Tsunoda, who makes his sixth appearance for the team this weekend, said his approach to qualifying in the RB21 hasn’t changed since he joined them from Racing Bulls (formerly RB). But he admitted he may have to dial it back in future.
“To be honest, the approach I was doing in qualifying, I don’t think it’s the first time I’ve done it,” he told the official F1 channel. “It’s not like I’ve just done it suddenly in that qualifying. I was doing it in the last few years and I didn’t have obviously any crash with [RB] with a single lap.
“So to be honest it just made me recognise how much I’m still not really understanding about the limit about this car.
“I don’t think I’m just going to change the approach, I have to take it a little bit easy when we change something in the set up. It looks like this car reacted [a lot more] than how it used to be at [RB]. So I think that’s it.”
Drivers have to build up their speed more gradually in Monaco, said Tsunoda, because the narrow track punishes mistakes.
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“Monaco is a track where I have to build up the pace anyway,” he said. “So it’s lucky that I can build the pace slowly and hopefully I can put it all together in qualifying.”
He finished eighth in last year’s race for RB and is confident of doing well again. “I love this track,” he said. “I have good memories of the last two years, especially last year I had a good result.
“So I have good confidence in this track. Again it’s a different team and obviously the car behaves slightly different to how I used to drive so probably I have to slightly take it easy more than usual.
“But in Monaco none of the drivers will drive 100% from FP1 anyway. So I’ll just focus on myself and build up from FP1 and put it all together in qualifying.”
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