Tsunoda “expected much worse” after narrowly missing points again

Yuki Tsunoda said AlphaTauri was losing out to its rivals in the straights and corners in Jeddah after narrowly missing a points finish for the second race in a row.

From 15th on the grid, Tsunoda climbed to sixth in the first third of the 50-lap Saudi Arabian Grand Prix before pitting. He then ran in eighth but lacked the pace of the cars behind him and eventually finished 11th. He described it as a “pretty tough” race.

“I gave my 100% effort every lap, and still couldn’t [retain position],” Tsunoda said of his lengthy second stint in the race. “Lost positions like that in the end in the last four laps, so I’m just really frustrated.”

On a high-speed track where very few of the corners require braking, Tsunoda said his AlphaTauri AT04 “lost too much pace in the straights, and a couple of corners that required downforce.” He “had to put in 100% effort in sector one to maximise the pace from our car to make the gap as much as possible” to avoid being passed around the rest of the lap.

In the end, Tsunoda’s efforts were not enough to avoid being passed. it leaves AlphaTauri as one of two teams yet to score in 2023 despite their worst result so far being better than seven other teams’.

“I think there’s frustration for all of us [at the team],” said Tsunoda. “At least I gave every effort, and at least I was able to extract the performance from the car as much as possible, and fighting close to the points.

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“So at least I gave excitement to the team. That’s really positive. Hopefully we can develop through the year and I can score points at some point as soon as possible.”

Tsunoda finished one second away from tenth place at the Bahrain Grand Prix, although in that race he never actually ran in a points position. In Jeddah he was demoted from the top ten with five laps to go and ended the race 2.6s away from his first points of 2023.

Despite the frustration, Tsunoda was encouraged by the improvement he has seen since Bahrain. “Definitely we didn’t expect that pace,” he said of his Jeddah performance. “I expected much worse than that. So good job from also the engineers and mechanics. Just need a couple of tenths, at least, every lap.”

He is hopeful the team will be able to capitalise on a chance to score points soon. “At least I saw my potential,” he said. “My performance, that’s the most important thing.

“If I keep fighting like this, I think there’s at some point a big chance, more than this one. So if that happens, I’ve just got to maximise that opportunity. Until then, I just wait and extract from the car like this performance as much as possible.”

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