Yuki Tsunoda said he wouldn’t have scored a point in his home race without a rapid pit stop performed by his crew.
The RB driver jumped ahead of three rivals when he made his second and final pit stop of the race on lap 22. As well as leapfrogging Logan Sargeant, Kevin Magnussen and Valtteri Bottas, the rapid turnaround also kept him ahead of Lance Stroll.
“Good job guys, well done,” said Tsunoda on the radio as he left the pits. “Thank you.”
Tsunoda went on to score the final point available, the first time he has ever finished in the top 10 at Suzuka. He said it felt “very special.”
“Even P10, I feel like – I mean, it’s too big a thing to say, but I feel like I scored P1,” he told the official F1 channel.
“At the same time, big credit to the team that the team was able to have a very fast pit stop and [I was] able to rejoin the track in front of the Aston. Without that work, I wasn’t able to score points today.
“So big credit to the team and obviously also the Japanese fans who support me all the week this week. The amount of energy I’ve got every lap from them was definitely a special feeling.”
Tsunoda’s race began badly as he lost places at the initial start, but he regained them at the restart, which was triggered after his team mate Daniel Ricciardo crashed with Alexander Albon.
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“We struggled at the first start,” said Tsunoda. “We were wearing medium and the two cars behind, Haas and [Sauber] was wearing soft, so probably there was an advantage for softs. I two lost positions, I was bit disappointed, but at the same time I was able to regain that two positions at the restart, after I wore the softs. So I think I did very well there, regained there at the start.
“After that the pace was good, I was just feeling conformable. Obviously I lost a bit of positions at the first pit stop. But after that still the pace was good and in the end the team did like a super hero job, I feel like Supermen were doing my pit stops, that was crazy. I was very happy.”
He also made up places on-track, including a move around the outside of Pierre Gasly in the Esses which Tsunoda said “reminds me of when Kamui [Kobayashi] was doing overtaking outside turn 11.”
“I knew that we’re not amazing in straight-line speed this week,” he explained. “The only place that we were quite good compared to other competitors in the top midfield was the first sector. And I just had a pretty…
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