Tsunoda is 'incredibly improved': 'They now play ping-pong, for example'

Is Yuki Tsunoda in the form of his life? It might be a bit early to say that, but at least the Japanese driver has started the season well with a seventh-place finish in Australia and a P10 last week in Japan. Visa Cash App RB are impressed with the 23-year-old driver's development.

Tsunoda may have been lapped by Max Verstappen at Suzuka, but he still took home a point. With that, the Visa Cash App-RB driver scored the maximum, as the men in front of him simply had a faster car. In an exciting battle, he held off Nico Hulkenberg, Lance Stroll and Kevin Magnussen, and others.

Tsunoda impresses

Does Tsunoda deserve special praise? "That was absolutely flawless. Really a masterpiece what he delivered there. He caught up, which is not easy on this circuit. At the same time, he didn't overload his tyres. You could see how consistent he was, especially in the last 10 laps. He went up and down a tenth at most. That shows he had everything under control," said CEO Peter Bayer.

With this, Tsunoda seems to be responding positively to the criticism he recently received from Helmut Marko. The Red Bull Racing consultant stated that Tsunoda performed fine in qualifying but left too much to be desired on Sundays. At least in Australia and Japan, this was not the case.

Previously, Tsunoda would sometimes lash out over the team radio towards his race engineer, but now he seems to have calmed down. Thanks to a great pit stop, he overtook many of his rivals and took the World Championship point. The pit crew received compliments from Daniel Ricciardo's teammate immediately afterwards.

Tsunoda undergoes development

Bayer tells Auto, Motor und Sport he sees a positive development. "Absolutely. We talked a lot with him about this. I'm actually a fan of emotional drivers and emotional athletes, but we explained to him that every time he swears, it costs him a tenth of a second. And that in this sport where it comes down to the tiniest of margins. Fortunately, he is so ambitious that he realised how important this issue is."

"Yuki has also improved physically incredibly over the winter. He draws a lot of strength from that. He has a new physiotherapist in the team who has a lot of experience and is doing him a lot of good. He is also doing a lot of new things with him. I don't want to go into too much detail, but they are now playing ping-pong, for example. He manages to set up Yuki in such a way that he stays focused and calm even in the frenzy before the start," concludes Bayer, who has been the CEO of Visa Cash App RB since June 2023.