RB Formula 1 CEO Peter Bayer has insisted that Yuki Tsunoda had the chance to overtake Kevin Magnussen before the team switched its cars in the Bahrain Grand Prix.
The rebranded squad provided an element of drama to an otherwise uneventful race when Tsunoda proved reluctant to abide by an order to let Daniel Ricciardo through.
Tsunoda had been attempting to pass Magnussen’s Haas for 12th place on ageing Hard tyres when his team-mate closed at a rapid rate on a fresher Soft compound.
The Japanese driver would relent but Ricciardo was unable to make progress up the order, prompting Tsunoda to be dissatisfied and calling for a review of the episode.
There would be further tension on the cooldown lap when Tsunoda dove down the inside of Ricciardo at Turn 8, locked up and then almost swerved into the sister car.
But Bayer admits that RB could have avoided the situation altogether and picked up a valuable point if the team had covered Lance Stroll’s earlier pit stop with Tsunoda.
“We knew that in terms of pace, if you’re looking at the top five teams, if they deliver, for anyone else, it’s going to be very, very difficult,” Bayer told Motorsport.com.
“For us there was a window that opened with Stroll and Hulkenberg. And that meant that from that moment on, if we [had] executed perfectly well, probably there was a chance to at least get to P10.
“I think we should have focused on Stroll, and covered Stroll on Lap 29. He did 28, we should have covered him in 29. It would have avoided first of all the fight with Magnussen, and it would have avoided the mess between the drivers. But it’s always easier afterwards.”
Bayer has confirmed Ricciardo’s version of events that the prospect of a team order materialising in the closing stages had been discussed prior to the race start.
“As far as the team order thing is concerned, yes we discussed it,” he divulged. “We gave Yuki a heads-up and said, ‘Look you need to you need to overtake Magnussen, and otherwise we need to swap’. He had two laps and didn’t make it. So we said let’s swap. We discussed it with him.”
But the Austrian asserts that he has no problem with Tsunoda’s disgruntled attitude, acknowledging that adrenaline would have been running high inside the cockpit.
“And it’s not easy probably, because they’re in the zone, and they feel they can do it. But we see from the data that they won’t, so we have to make those decisions.”
Amid the Faenza-based camp’s closer technical collaboration with Red Bull, RB’s midfield rivals had been concerned that the team would be a regular points scorer.
Despite Tsunoda excelling in qualifying to land 11th, RB failed to trouble the top five teams and Bayer has clarified the focus is on maximising its current package.
“For now, it’s really focusing on fine-tuning car balance,” he addressed. “It’s interesting, Yuki seems to be quite happy with the balance.
“Daniel still wants a bit more front, which we actually we managed to find now. In the final stint, we managed to find that set-up for him.
“And so again we learned a lot this weekend, and we’ll take the fight to the guys next week in Jeddah.
“It’s very, very close. It’s within tenths, and as we have seen in qualifying, thousandths of seconds. I guess if we forget about Max [Verstappen], it will be a very interesting year!”
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