After trying it out with the Red Bull Simulator, Tsunoda admitted that Max Verstappen could “address” his setup options “incredible.”
Verstappen returned to victory at Suzuka with a perfect display from pole position.
On the other side of the garage, it was the Tsunami’s first race at Red Bull, and he couldn’t make it into the third quarter and finished outside the top 10 of the Grand Prix.
After a solid start to the actual weekend, Tsunoda deviated from Verstappen’s setup.
The Tsunoda chose more downforce and drove bigger rear wings in the car, but in the end it didn’t work.
Prior to Bahrain Granpuri, Tsunoda revealed that he had tried to set up the Verstappen perfectly, “I definitely felt tricky.”
“In terms of how I got in the car, that’s still fine. It’s too early to be able to drive comfortably. But I think it’s possible to balance the car that most drivers have struggled with so far.”
“In fact, we went to Max’s side, not my setup. I thought it was good. Surprisingly, I can drive very well so far. The direction I tried with the simulator was with a simulator that focused on calming the back.
“I also felt that Max was pretty positive on the simulator, so in the end Max also started in the direction I already really liked in Suzuka. I went to a more extreme side in that direction, but it didn’t work.
“It’s not like the setup Max used in China. It was a little more specific as China was more front-end limitations. But the Max setup helps (at the rear). I think the setup with the simulator will definitely feel tricky.
Verstappen calls for improvements to Red Bull
Despite not having the fastest car in Formula 1 in McLaren’s impressive start of the year, Verstappen is one point away from Landolis at the top of the driver’s championship.
Verstappen extracted the maximum value from RB21 in search of F1 titles in 5 consecutive times.
Despite the close gap in rankings, Verstappen is cautious of his title chances without any major improvements to the car.
“No, we need to improve so that we can fight for the title,” Verstappen says.
“It’s great that we’re one point behind, but I think we’ve only managed to maximize the weekend so far. We need to find more performances to really compete for the title.”