Ranking worsens
The Qatar Grand Prix was far from favorable for the Racing Bulls, with both drivers finishing outside the points under the Lusail night sky. Unlike their direct rivals for sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship, Alpine and Haas, the Faenza-based team heads to Yas Marina with little to no satisfaction and the awareness of needing to recover a 13-point gap from the French team, which currently holds sixth place ahead of the season-ending Abu Dhabi GP.
The collapse
Initially appearing capable of maintaining a position in the top ten, Yuki Tsunoda gradually lost pace over the course of the race, ultimately finishing 13th. The Japanese driver admitted his disappointment: “We had a tough race,” he commented. “We had a good start, and I knew it was the best chance to gain some positions, but then we just started losing pace and dropped back. We’ll work together as a team to analyze the data and learn for the future, to understand what went wrong this weekend. Abu Dhabi is next week. Now we all need to reset, and we’ll head there giving it our all for the final race weekend of the season.”
The mistake and the penalty
Yuki Tsunoda finished just ahead of his teammate Liam Lawson, who received a 10-second penalty and two points on his Super Licence for contact with Valtteri Bottas: “We weren’t fast enough to fight with the teams we needed to compete against,” he added. “I had a spin at the first safety car restart while trying to overtake Valtteri Bottas. I didn’t have enough tire temperature and lost the car while trying to avoid contact. Then we caught back up to the pack, and our pace wasn’t bad, but we were out of position. We also had balance issues towards the end of the race. It was a tough race—last year we struggled here too. We’ve made great progress this season, but there’s still a lot of work to do. Ultimately, we lost a lot of points compared to our rivals, but we’ll fight hard in Abu Dhabi.”
Leave a Reply