Video: Yuki Tsunoda on Consistency in F1

After having a more robust season in the 2022 F1 season where he found more consistency in his driving, Yuki Tsunoda aims to improve more on his consistency in 2023, all this and more in AlphaTauri’s latest Behind the Visor episode!

“From the weekend in Bahrain, it’s clear that our performance is quite far away from where we wanted to be in the first race, especially as we are aiming to be at the front of the midfield. We still need to find a lot more performance from our car. We did make a step forward from Friday to Saturday, which meant I was able to get into Q2 which was good. In the end, we were not consistent enough with our pace to make it to Q3. Last year, we were fighting Williams for P9, P10 in the Constructors’. It means we have to focus on developing our car and for myself, I have to try and extract as much performance from the car as possible and I’d say I managed to do that in Bahrain on Sunday.

I know where we are struggling but for this weekend in Saudi, I am more hopeful that we can be better than in Bahrain. I will be pushing myself to give the team as much useful feedback as possible and then we will see how it goes. I think the high-speed nature of the track in Saudi will suit our package better, so let’s wait and see.

Spending more time in the car, driving at the Pirelli test for a day immediately after Bahrain was definitely very useful. It is a bigger benefit to do it during the early part of the season than the end of year test. From a driver’s point of view, it’s better to have a lot of mileage at the beginning of the season as it gives you a chance to understand more about your car and its set-ups. I did a lot of mileage and went pretty much flat out all day!

Last year, my Saudi weekend did not go well at all, as various technical issues meant I was unable to drive on Saturday and then could not even start the race on Sunday. I find it an enjoyable track to drive. It’s really unique, Sector 1 especially with the high-speed esses, which are very specific to the Saudi track and not found anywhere else on the calendar. Last year was unfortunate and I found it very frustrating as I had really enjoyed qualifying here in 2021 when I was eighth fastest. Our reliability with this year’s car has been good so far. During testing and the first race, we had no major issues, so I’m confident that this year I will drive every session from Friday to Sunday, and I am looking forward to it.”