F1 News
Horner shares hilarious anecdote about Tsunoda: 'Did Yuki really say that?'
- Ludo van Denderen
Yuki Tsunoda is currently in a fine phase of his career. The Japanese scored points in the United States and Brazil, a sign that his AlphaTauri is becoming increasingly competitive. Earlier this season, things were anything but crescendo for Ysunoda, which regularly led to a heavily swearing driver sitting in the Italian team's car during Grands Prix.
With his swearing and ranting, Tsunoda has become a fan favourite. "My kids love Yuki, unbelievable!" said Christian Horner, Red Bull Racing's team boss. AlphaTauri, as we know, belongs to the Red Bull group. It was partly thanks to Horner that Tsunoda got a chance in Formula 1. One of the first encounters with the Japanese driver Horner can still remember well.
Tsunoda's first test
During the podcast Eff won with DRS, Horner tells a hilarious anecdote: "He came over to the UK to learn English and drive for an English team that was based on the outskirts of London. They are something like a movie from Snatch or a Guy Ritchie movie. So this little Japanese guy thought that motherf****r or the word f**k was just part of the English language, part of the English vocabulary."
"So he gets in a Formula One car and in his very first test, he's going, 'I got understeer you motherf****r'. And did he really say that? It was hilarious," the team boss looks back.
So Tsunoda did not completely unlearn his swearing, even now that he has been living in Italy for several years. It is common knowledge that AlphaTauri regularly indicates that it could all be a little less. But as the saying goes: you can take a Japanese out of the suburbs of London, but you apparently can't take the suburbs of London out of the Japanese.