Yuki Tsunoda says he's set for "free laptime" as Red Bull aims to fit its latest Formula 1 upgrade package to his car ahead of third practice for the Canadian Grand Prix.
Since his qualifying crash last month at Imola, where he destroyed several Red Bull upgrade parts, Tsunoda has been out of kilter with team-mate Max Verstappen in terms of specification.
Red Bull is not flush with spares with the cost cap limiting team spending, which means Tsunoda reverted to older-spec components at Imola. He carried those over to the Monaco GP and Spanish GP weekends.
Red Bull has managed to get a set of the latest upgrades ready for this weekend's Canadian GP.
It is understood that the parts have already arrived in Montreal and Red Bull planned to work overnight on Friday to get them fitted to Tsunoda’s RB21 - which should then put him on pretty much the same specification of car as team-mate Verstappen.
While not referring directly to the upgrades, Tsunoda said after Friday practice in Montreal that he was looking forward to a step forward.
“I know there is something coming for tomorrow, which is good,” he said. “That gives, hopefully, a bit of laptime there - free laptime.”
Red Bull chief engineer Paul Monaghan said earlier on Friday that the team hoped to bring Tsunoda's car up to the same spec as Verstappen's.
“We'll try to do it this weekend, but it's somewhat depending on our ducks aligning,” he said.
“If we can, of course we will; it's in our interest to give him the best kit. It’s just unfortunate circumstances, we've not been able to do that.”
It is estimated that the Red Bull upgrade, which includes a floor and sidepod inlets, is worth around one tenth of a second in pure performance - but also comes with improvements to car behaviour.
After Tsunoda endured a challenging Spanish GP weekend, when he ended up last on the grid, he knows that the expectations are on him to do much better.
“I definitely have to be in Q3, that’s the target,” he said on Friday. “Let’s see how it goes tomorrow. Like I said, there’s something to come tomorrow and yeah, let’s see how the behaviour [is] with that.”
