The AlphaTauri Formula 1 team is clearly not having its best season in 2022, but amid the difficulty of getting the AT03 to become a regular points finisher Yuki Tsunoda seems to have taken a decent step forward as an F1 driver.
There was so much crashing (and audible swearing) in Tsunoda’s tumultuous 2021 rookie F1 campaign that even he was surprised to have his contract renewed – but this year, though the car has been relatively less competitive, Tsunoda has looked calmer and much more assured.
He outqualified team-mate Pierre Gasly three times in the run of six F1 races encompassing Australia to Azerbaijan, was ahead until Q3 in Miami and only two tenths behind Gasly in Melbourne and Baku. Tsunoda’s also scored 69% of Gasly’s points so far in 2022, whereas after 11 races of last season that ratio stood at just 36%.
But colliding with Gasly and taking both cars out of decent points-paying positions at the British Grand Prix has threatened to undo all that good work.
Not only did the incident lead to a serious dressing-down from team boss Franz Tost, it also meant AlphaTauri slipped behind Haas to eighth in the constructors’ championship after the subsequent race in Austria, where car performance was so lacking that Gasly declared the team “can’t keep going like this”.
He was of course referring to AlphaTauri’s lack of effective aerodynamic development, not Tsunoda’s errant Silverstone driving, but it’s also true that Tsunoda needs to be careful. When an F1 team is only marginally in points contention, you cannot afford such expensive mistakes.
“I called Yuki into my office and told him that this is absolutely no-go and that he has to be more disciplined and patient,” said Tost.
By running less wing in wet qualifying at Silverstone, Tsunoda gave himself a straightline speed advantage for the dry conditions of race day, but still could probably have afforded to wait to pass Gasly in the pits if necessary, rather than attempt an ambitious and costly overtake – though it should be noted the team also encouraged Tsunoda to attack his team-mate on track.
“The bottom line is the cars were set up slightly differently,” said AlphaTauri technical director Jody Egginton. “They were on the same [tyre] compound but Yuki needed to be more patient.
“I think he understands that now, [it] wasn’t the best place to do it, and the unfortunate reality is, as much of a struggle [as] that weekend had been, we were potentially on for a two-car points finish.
“It’s part of the learning process, and we have to learn it, he has to learn from it, and then we move on.”
It is known that Tsunoda is working with a Red Bull-appointed psychologist to help him remain calm and undistracted while driving – and to be fair Tsunoda’s communication with AlphaTauri in the immediate aftermath of the Silverstone collision suggested he avoided a meltdown.
But clearly there is an underlying fear within Red Bull that Tsunoda might be operating too close to the limit of his capacity, and that costly errors could come at any moment. That he’s potentially still an accident waiting to happen.
Tsunoda is only contracted until the end of 2022, so once again he must convince Red Bull and AlphaTauri that he’s worth retaining as Gasly’s team-mate.
It’s true the Red Bull Junior scheme is not exactly piling pressure onto Tsunoda from the lower levels right now, but that doesn’t mean Red Bull won’t get creative and find a way to replace Tsunoda if it feels he ultimately can’t cut it at this level.
The biggest weapon in Tsunoda’s armoury is that both Tost and Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko are big fans of aggressive and attacking drivers who have a bit of a wild side to go with their natural speed. Their logic is that, rather like the engineer who might prefer to make fast but fragile cars more reliable than make slow but reliable cars faster, it is better to have Tsunoda be fast but wild and try to tone him down a little than attempt to make a slower and steadier driver somehow quicker.
“I like problem childs [sic] because these are the real good child [sic] who can make something out of it,” argued Tost in Austria. “I don’t like the holy childs [sic]. Yuki made a mistake [at Silverstone]; he knows it and he will work on this. He is still in his development process. He is fast. He was also fast this weekend here. And he will do his way. It takes a little bit of time.”
Tsunoda’s impressive natural speed in the car, for a driver of limited experience, coupled with the fact Red Bull currently lacks better options further down the motorsport food chain, means Tsunoda is likely to earn another stay of execution – so long as he can prove his race day error at Silverstone was merely a blip, a moment of madness, rather than the beginning of a worrying regression to bad habits of the past.
“If he continues like he did during the season, apart from crashing, he has a good chance to stay with us,” added Tost. “It depends on him. If he shows a good performance he will stay, if he doesn’t show a good performance, he is out.”
