After the clearing of Spa, Tsunoda sees clouds again in Hungary

Even when Max Verstappen, the four-time reigning world champion, only managed to take two points from a weekend, we understand that the team Red Bull whole is in difficulty. For Yuki tsunoda, there was no miracle, the Japanese driver having started from the pit lane for this fourteenth meeting of the season, in Hungary.

By finding himself at the back of the pack, number 22 was more exposed to external problems, which is what happened to him, since, according to him, he suffered damage as soon as he reached the halfway point, which hampered his potential progress: " I had some damage from the middle of the race, and it wasn't my fault. It cost me a lot of pace and that's it.", he explained laconically to the microphone of F1TV.

Where the Japanese could have been satisfied with a sentence as clear as it was short, he nevertheless wanted to expose internal problems within his team. Parachuted into Max Verstappen's teammate after two disappointing Grands Prix from Liam Lawson, Tsunoda has since been a new victim of the difficulties encountered by the driver of the second Red Bull, which date back to the 2019 season, when Pierre Gasly and Alexander albon had struggled to compete with the Dutch. On the Japanese side, communication problems were mentioned.

« We could have improved on communication though, if I was fighting for points it could have cost me a lot, and it's been happening for two races. It's starting to get really frustrating. It's something we have to improve on and keep fighting for in the second half of the season."

Tsunoda still sees the positive side

As in the Belgian Grand Prix, Yuki Tsunoda found himself on a bad strategy, stopping in the pits twice, while this time the one-stop strategy, used in particular by Lando Norris (McLaren) seemed the best. The troubles the 25-year-old driver mentioned could potentially run deeper, and he would be one of the first, if not the first, to publicly discuss internal difficulties in his role as second driver.

Despite this, the Japanese remains satisfied with his first part of the season, and mainly with his newfound pace since the Belgian GP, where he had a new floor, and which allowed him to significantly get closer to Verstappen's pace: " The first half of the season was positive in terms of pace once we had the upgrades. After getting the new floor, I was much closer to Max, both in practice and qualifying, and that's positive. It's something that not many drivers have managed to do at Red Bull, and I can take some positives from that. At the same time, we're aiming for points and this weekend was really difficult for us. We'll keep working hard to bounce back."

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