Yuki Tsunoda admitted he misjudged his approach to qualifying at Imola after crashing on his first run of the session.
The damage to his car was so extensive Red Bull had to use a new survival cell and fit a replacement power unit. That forced Tsunoda to start yesterday’s race from the pit lane.
From there he ran a single-stop strategy and salvaged one point for 10th place. Tsunoda said he was relieved to give his team some reward for their efforts.
“At least I’m happy that I gave something to the team for the amount of work they put in overnight, especially the mechanics, it was massive,” he told the official F1 channel. “So I [feel] okay that I at least gave something.
“But at the same time I was very frustrated still from last qualifying. I couldn’t really sleep much last night. Anyway, I have to move on and it is what it is.”
Tsunoda lapped within a tenth of a second of team mate Max Verstappen in practice on Friday, then fell over a second behind him in the final hour of running before qualifying on Sunday. Despite the sharp swing in performance, he said he felt confident before qualifying, but that proved his undoing.
“To be honest, the one-lap pace was pretty good,” he said. “Until FP2, especially, I was pretty close to Max.
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“In FP3 I didn’t have much opportunity to have many laps. So to be honest I had quite okay confidence into the qualifying.
“That made it even worse for myself that I probably made too [high] expectations of myself and tried to be hero in the first lap in Q1, which is really unnecessary. [With] those things I have to step back and really think about it and do better next time, for sure.”
Video: Tsunoda’s Imola crash
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