Verstappen praises Tsunoda: 'Started strong despite all the chaos'

11:12, 04 Apr

Updated: 11:13, 04 Apr

byKada Sarkozi

Max Verstappen was not satisfied after the Friday at the Suzuka Circuit. The Dutchman has a new teammate for this weekend, and praised the Japanese driver.

Verstappen doesn't have a 'great read' yet

"Of course, it was quite chaotic out there for everyone with the red flags so, like everyone else, we couldn’t complete what we wanted to do. This meant that today has been quite difficult for us as we were trying different things in the car and a lot of things weren’t clicking as much as we would have liked," the driver began in Red Bull's press release after FP1 and FP2 were completed.

"I feel like I still have a bit of work to do" he also reiterated his earlier verdict about the day.

"I was on the soft tyre, which requires a lot of management, and you can’t really push it so I only got about three laps at the end which wasn’t a great read."

On Tsunoda

The four-time world champion complimented his new teammate, who replaced Liam Lawson entering this weekend. "I think Yuki started off really well today even though FP1 and FP2 was very chaotic for everyone."

During the second session, there were four red flags in total: two for the incidents of Jack Doohan and Fernando Alonso, and two for the grass catching fire. Therefore Red Bull will have some work to do ahead of qualifying.

"Tomorrow in FP3 we can hopefully have a bit of a longer run but overall it hasn’t been an easy day," Verstappen concluded.

This article was written in collaboration with Nicole Mulder