Yuki Tsunoda was left frustrated at the end of the Mexico City Grand Prix after coming home 11th on a day where he felt points were more than possible in the RB21. The Japanese racer had been running in the top 10 in the first stint and was battling with the likes of Oscar Piastri, before his afternoon unravelled in the pits.
Tsunoda does not have a confirmed drive for next season, and is under pressure to perform at Red Bull, but he has recently shown an uptick in form scoring in both Baku and Austin and showing encouraging signs of progress over one lap too.
Starting 10th in Mexico City, Tsunoda had a solid getaway and was running eighth ahead of Piastri. Although he did eventually lose out in his fight with the McLaren man – which was partly due to being on the unfavoured medium tyres – Tsunoda held him up long enough to disrupt Piastri’s race, which may or may not be crucial when it comes to deciding the Championship.
But while Tsunoda was on the same strategy as his team mate, it did not play out as well for the Japanese racer, who pitted later than his rivals and came out in traffic. As such, he was not able to utilise the extra pace in his soft compound tyres.
And he was further hampered by a slow pit stop to boot. In the end he came home 11th, a few seconds away from Gabriel Bortoleto in the final points paying position.
“Today was easy points, we just threw it away,” said Tsunoda after the race. “It is what it is, it’s still racing. The positive is the pace was pretty okay, so something to take.
“Just keep progressing and keep learning, and that is what I’m doing. But this kind of situation, missing out on points that were easy, and we could take today, P8, P7, I don’t know. Frustrating.”
Team boss Laurent Mekies was keen to praise Tsunoda, saying that his pace was not far off that of Verstappen for much of the weekend, in a display he called “his best weekend in a long time.”
“It was very, very close in quali to Max,” Mekies explained. “I think it was two tenths in Q2. Today, the first stint was very, very strong as well, two tenths, three tenths to Max on the same very long first stint on the medium.
“Then after, fair enough, I think it’s on our side, we left him out a bit longer because there was an advantage for us to do that and we had a slightly long pit stop, so we killed a few points that he would have scored on merit.”
Tsunoda has scored in three of the six Grands Prix since the summer break, having scored in just three of the previous 12 races excluding Sprints.
However, with Arvid Lindblad impressing in his FP1 session with the team in Mexico, the pressure remains firmly on Tsunoda’s shoulders as he seeks a way to continue his Red Bull F1 career.
