As the first segment of qualifying concluded at the Italian Grand Prix on Saturday, Yuki Tsunoda was given the tough news that he was out.
His answer told the whole story.
“Yeah, man, this is ridiculous,” Tsunoda complained over the radio. “This is so hard to drive. This is ridiculous.”
After being reminded to “keep it clean on the radio”, Tsunoda returned to the pits to give a full account of his qualifying session.
“Today was a tough day. Yesterday we started quite a bit behind the pace, and then session after session we managed to reduce the gap towards the midfield, but unfortunately, it’s clearly not enough. I’m disappointed, some things are not clear, so we need to understand what’s going on, because we don’t have an easy car to drive all weekend,” Tsunoda explained in the team’s post-session report. “I’m quite happy with our laps in qualifying, but I think we’re still lacking something, because in general I’m lacking pace this weekend. There are differences between the cars, so there are definitely a lot of things to learn. I’ll do my best tomorrow.”
While Tsunoda was knocked out at the end of Q1, Daniel Ricciardo managed to advance to the second segment of qualifying, but his day ended there. While Tsunoda is set to start from 16th, Ricciardo will be 12th when the lights go out at Monza.
But the experienced driver believes that with the tightness of the field – and the uncertainty about what the hard compound will provide under race conditions – overtaking could be possible on Sunday.
“I’m really happy with today’s lap, I didn’t feel like we left much on the table. I knew it would be difficult to get into Q3 after this morning, so it was nice to finally get really close. Ultimately, I’m happy with the lap and I felt we did our best. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough, but the field is really close,” explained Ricciardo. “Realistically there’s a whole mix of cars from P8 to P20, and the battle for points will be tomorrow. Nobody has used the hard yet, so it’s an unknown for the race. We’re really close and if you have the pace, you can overtake here. I’m looking forward to making up positions tomorrow.”
Visa Cash App RB F1 Team may need Ricciardo to gain some places tomorrow as their rivals for sixth place in the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship, Haas, are set to start Nico Hulkenberg in the points in tenth place. VCARB have a seven-point lead in that battle at the moment, so every place – and point – counts.