Yuki Tsunoda finished far behind his team mate in the Italian Grand Prix but was encouraged by the step forward Red Bull appears to have made with the RB21.
Max Verstappen won by 19 seconds at Monza. But Tsunoda, whose car was damaged after a collision with Liam Lawson, could only manage 13th place, 80 seconds behind his team mate.
Tsunoda admitted his pace hadn’t been strong enough in the grand prix prior to the collision. However he was pleased with his pace over a single lap, which saw him qualify inside the top 10.
“I think also for myself it was a pretty good race weekend, apart from the long run,” Tsunoda told the official Formula 1 channel.
“On the short run we were there, I went through to Q3 and I was consistently close to Max, which was good.” Tsunoda was within three tenths of a second of Verstappen in Q2, but the gap more than doubled in Q3, where Tsunoda lacked a slipstream from another car on his final run.
Tsunoda said the two drivers were also running different set-ups on their RB21s. “The good news is the floor – that one he introduced from that grand prix – is working for him. That made [it possible for him] to go on a different set-up. I didn’t have the full confidence with my set-up, to go to his set-up, but he put it all together.”
Following a poor weekend for Red Bull at the Hungaroring prior to the summer break, they have now taken a win and a second place in the last two rounds with Verstappen. Tsunoda says the mood in the team is improving.
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“Everyone’s feeling energetic and very motivated,” he said, “so I’ll just keep pushing and work on the things that I can improve at.”
However Tsunoda has only scored points once in the last nine rounds and is focused on improving his performance. “I know the set-up that I like and it’s just a matter of how to make it work in both short and long runs,” he explained. “I think it’s getting there, especially [on] short runs.
“So [I] just [need] more focus, more effort on the other side of the run, in the long run, and I just have to put it all together.”
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