The updates brought by Red Bull don’t seem to have the desired effect, as confirmed by the statements from Verstappen and Tsunoda.
Red Bull had promised some updates ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix, in addition to the new livery, but in the first two free practice sessions, they didn’t have the hoped-for effect. After a good morning, with Verstappen in fifth and Tsunoda in sixth, the two drivers struggled to replicate the same performance in the afternoon, facing difficulties in finding the perfect lap time. This was confirmed by their own statements at the end of Friday’s sessions in Suzuka.
Here’s the comment from the four-time world champion “Obviously, it was chaotic with all those red flags, so, like everyone else, we couldn’t complete the program. It was a difficult day for us because we wanted to try new things with the car, but many of them don’t seem to work as we hoped. It’s also hard to complete a lap: you need a lot of confidence and commitment on this track, and right now, I still have some work to do; I was on the soft tires, which require a lot of management, and you can’t push. That’s why I only did three fast laps at the end, which don’t give much of a reading. I think Yuki started off well, despite the two chaotic sessions. Hopefully, we’ll have more time in FP3, but all in all, it wasn’t an easy day.”
Things went even worse for Yuki Tsunoda in the second session, as he finished in eighteenth place with many difficulties in finding a clean lap time. The Japanese driver commented on his Friday: “The first session went better than expected. It’s a good start, although in FP2, I couldn’t set a time due to the red flag interruptions. There’s work to do, maybe there’s something we need to look into, we’ll review the data for tomorrow, but overall, it’s been okay so far. We’ll see how qualifying goes tomorrow. The car feels a bit different from the simulator, maybe just a little bit in terms of the feel with the car, but that’s natural. Let’s say that things in the car are a bit more extreme.”
Photo: X Oracle Red Bull
