Most people thought Yuki Tsunoda’s latest F1 role was to be a measuring stick for Daniel Ricciardo. Had the Australian beaten his quick but occasionally erratic, often shouty team-mate, he’d have paved the way for a comeback to Red Bull Racing. But Tsunoda has transcended those expectations by being less inconsistent and a lot less shouty – and still very, very quick...
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On the evening of 29 October 2023, Yuki Tsunoda felt completely destroyed. He locked himself in his hotel room and wouldn’t come out until the next morning. He knew he’d screwed up.
“I just had to breathe,” he says, leaning back in his chair and exhaling as he reveals to GP Racing the torment of last year’s Mexican Grand Prix. “Yeah… I wasn’t really thinking about the team. I was probably thinking only about myself. I was trying to catch and overtake Daniel – just for myself, just to prove it.”
Until lap 49 he’d had an amazing race. From 19th on the grid he was up to 14th by lap two, eighth when Kevin Magnussen’s crash prompted a red flag on lap 34. New tyres, 35 more laps to the end, no more pitstops. Just bring the car home and four points with it. But Yuki didn’t want points – he wanted to beat Daniel Ricciardo. Because he knew he was quicker. And he wanted everyone else to know it too.
The team’s late-season upgrade push had started to pay off. And in Mexico AlphaTauri (now RB) was particularly strong – enabling Daniel to claim an incredible fourth on the grid. Yuki had been quicker than his team-mate in FP3 but simply didn’t get the chance to show what he could’ve done in qualifying, thanks to an engine-change penalty.
“I was frustrated,” Tsunoda admits. “Unfortunately or fortunately, in that race it was probably the best car we had the whole year. We struggled so much in the first half of the season, and now he’s got the best car in the best timing – and I couldn’t show that performance. That kind of clicked me to rush in the race to try to overtake him. If I think now, calmly, had I ended up P8 starting from P19 – it’s still a great result. But I didn’t think about it at that point, because I was just too focused on proving to the team, to all the people, that I’m the better driver.”
It’s probably not easy to be Daniel Ricciardo’s team-mate. Dan’s charismatic, funny, good with the media, and even when he’s slow he knows how to make it sound like he actually isn’t – to sow a seed of doubt that there�
