Team boss AlphaTauri: 'Tsunoda went so fast that I feared a crash'
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- GPblog.com
Yuki Tsunoda has had some difficult weekends at the start of his F1 career, Portugal and Monaco to name a few, but the Japanese rider made a big impression during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The Japanese driver drove for the first time ever on the Baku City Circuit and performed excellently with P7 on both Saturday and Sunday.
Tsunoda's pace was good all weekend, more than good in fact. Franz Tost was equally worried for a moment that a crash would follow. "Yuki did a fantastic job, I must say. He had a small incident in qualifying, but that was in Q3 and can happen, it also happened to more experienced drivers. His race pace sometimes was unbelievable. I was really worried that something happens , because he was really fast."
The 21-year-old driver has six Grands Prix behind him so now knows what is expected of him. "He is in a very good way, and I think that he will come up with some good results also in the second half of the season when he gets a little bit more experienced, especially on race tracks which he knows," said the AlphaTauri team boss at Motorsport.com. "We have to work on some things, we know this, but I am confident that we get everything together because he is a super talent."
Tsunoda adapts quickly in Baku
In the first weekend of the season, Tsunoda also impressed in Bahrain. Yet the Azerbaijan weekend was his strongest, according to Tost. "For me, yes. Because he improved a lot. We must not forget it was his first time in Baku, and of course in Bahrain he scored two points when he finished ninth, but he knew the track quite well from F2, then we tested there, and we could find a good set-up," the 65-year-old Austrian concluded.
Tsunoda is currently on eight points in the World Championship, which puts him in fourteenth place. Pierre Gasly is in eighth place with 31 points. Next week at Paul Ricard in France, Tsunoda will get the chance to close the gap to his teammate.