In Bahrain, Yuki Tsunoda narrowly misses out on points
Yuki Tsunoda had to admit defeat to his rival at Williams, Alex Albon. Both were fighting for the tenth position, but the Japanese driver's car ultimately proved to be slower on the straight, preventing him from scoring his first points of the season.
AlphaTauri, 9th in the constructor championship in 2022, did not score any points for the opening of this new season. Nyck de Vries secured a respectable 14th place this Sunday in Bahrain, while Yuki Tsunoda battled with Alex Albon for the 10th place for a long time, ultimately finishing 11th. The reason is simple, according to the Japanese driver, the Williams car is much faster.
“The start was the decisive moment as I lost a few positions compared to Williams, and their straight-line speed was too strong for us, so we couldn’t overtake them,” he highlighted in a team statement.
That’s not all, the AT04 tires also gave him a hard time. « I am satisfied with my tire management, even though we had more difficulties than expected. As soon as we wanted to push, the tires started overheating, and I started sliding and losing the rear. We still have work to do to develop the car so that we can regularly compete with the midfield, starting with Saudi Arabia. »
A positive running pace
Nevertheless, the running pace was better than expected. While he is aware of the work to be done, the Japanese remains confident.
“The pace of the race was better than expected, but at the same time, it’s very frustrating to miss out on points. […] Since we struggled with high-speed performance, Saudi Arabia could be challenging, but I remain positive because I’m confident that the team and I will be able to extract the speed from the car to score points,” he explains.
On his side, the team principal of the team, Franz Tost, is not satisfied with this first Grand Prix and believes that the path to reach the expected level is still long.
We know where the weaknesses of the car are located and we must work to increase performance with new improvements that, I hope, will be effective when they arrive. After qualifying in P14 and P19, we were able to recover during the race, and I must say that both drivers did a good job. Yuki pushed hard to finish in the top 10, but unfortunately, he was missing a few tenths. Nyck also performed well in the race, it was important for him to learn the characteristics of the car in race conditions and gain as much experience as possible.
