The past few weeks have been tough for Yuki Tsunoda.
But thanks to a strong performance at Saturday's Singapore Grand Prix, he's in a position to erase those bitter memories and bring in some points for Visa Cash App RB F1 Team.
Tsunoda has retired from his previous two races – first at the Italian Grand Prix after contact with Nico Hulkenberg and then early in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after contact with Lance Stroll on the opening lap – but on Saturday night on the streets of Marina Bay, Tsunoda surged into Q3 and will start the Singapore Grand Prix in eighth place.
Tsunoda expressed some dissatisfaction that his run in Q3 was not “perfect”, but given his results over the past two race weekends, a top-10 start is sure to be in order.
“It's been a while since I made it into Q3, but today I finally did! I've been waiting for this moment. Congratulations and thanks to the team,” said Tsunoda in the team's post-qualifying report. “Obviously, as a driver you always aim for a perfect qualifying, but unfortunately my final run was a bit chaotic. Time was tight on the warm-up lap so I was forced to rush, which cost me a bit of my final push lap.
“At first I was a bit frustrated when we crossed the finish line, but considering our performance in the last few races this is a big achievement for us,” Tsunoda continued. “Tomorrow won't be easy. We will try to catch up with Haas in front of us, but at the same time we have to be careful of the faster cars behind us. We will do everything we can to get some points.”
On the other side of the garage the atmosphere is quite different.
Daniel Ricciardo was eliminated in Q1 as the pressure to defend his place in F1 grew and he faced talk of being replaced ahead of October's United States Grand Prix, and his hopes of “putting the RB01 on the podium”, as he said at Thursday's media day, still seem a long way off.
“Today wasn't good,” Ricciardo said at the start, “I really struggled with the soft tyres. I wasn't competitive with any of the sets I used today. The pace was good yesterday so I didn't do too much to the car overnight.”
“We performed well on the medium tyre in FP3, but it was very difficult to get the most out of the soft tyre and we just couldn't find a solution in qualifying,” Ricciardo continued. “We were only 10 seconds behind Q2 but we were hoping for more based on yesterday's practice run.”
For VCARB, everything is decided going into Sunday night's race in Singapore, with Tsunoda in a position to take home some points but Ricciardo starting from the back and putting his F1 future in a tough spot.
