Yuki Tsunoda said the feeling in his Red Bull is “exaggerated” compared to his simulator testing as he admitted to the car being “tricky” during practice at the Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix.
Tsunoda has made his long-awaited Red Bull bow, completing his first two practice sessions for the Milton Keynes-based outfit in front of his home crowd at Suzuka.
Ahead of his on-track debut, Tsunoda completed some simulator running shortly after the shock announcement he’d swapped with Liam Lawson.
Speaking to Motorsport.com, Tsunoda explained his simulator run, saying, “If you ask whether it felt tricky to handle, I wouldn’t say it gave me a particularly strange feeling, at least in the simulator.”
His on-track experience was slightly different however, and at the end of Friday’s running he said: “It’s a bit different to the simulator from what I felt, to be honest.
“A little bit more than I expected in terms of the car feeling,” Tsunoda added.
“I knew anyway it was always going to be a bit different in the real car and it was a little bit more exaggerated in the real car. It’s feeling a bit more tricky.”
Assessing Tsunoda’s opening day at Red Bull
Despite feeling the car was trickier than simulator testing, Tsunoda fared admirably up against Max Verstappen during his opening day as a Red Bull driver.
In FP2, the Japanese home-hero languished down in 18th, but a fragmented session interrupted by four red flags meant he was unable to set a representative time on a Soft tyre.
However, in FP1, Tsunoda was able to lay down a time on comparative Soft tyre to Verstappen and finished just 0.108s behind the Dutchman in sixth.
That is a margin that Tsunoda will seek to replicate during qualifying on Saturday and he spoke positively of his opening practice session.
“Yeah, FP1 was better than expected,” he said.
“A good start for myself.”
The problem is the limited running Tsunoda had in FP2, which he admits means there is work to be done.
“FP2 I didn’t set a lap time. I think there is a lot of work to do, maybe slightly struggled or something that we have to look through the data in FP2 more, but so far overall it’s OK,” he explained.
“I just have to build up confidence more.”
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