Yuki Tsunoda says he needs to excel in the final two races of the 2024 Formula 1 season to “force” Red Bull to consider him for a race seat – and that a simulator test has indicated he can be quick in the team’s car.
Tsunoda is one of several drivers in the mix to replace the embattled Sergio Perez, who currently sits eighth in the drivers’ standings when his team-mate won the world championship last weekend.
Perez’s comparatively meagre points haul – 152 to Max Verstappen’s 403 – has enabled both McLaren and Ferrari to overhaul Red Bull in the constructors’ standings, which could cost the team tens of millions of dollars in prize revenue.
Tsunoda is one of several candidates to replace him and, ahead of getting a recently confirmed opportunity to drive Red Bull’s 2024 car in the post-season Abu Dhabi test, he has had a run in the team’s simulator.
“I drove different tracks just to get used to how the Red Bull car looks,” he said. “It’s a pretty fast car.
“In the simulator at least, it just feels different [to the RB] and just great to drive, like the amount of speed you can carry into the corner. And it’s quite sharp turning compared with our car.
“But it just feels great. Normally, simulator work is more like work, right? But when I was driving [a Red Bull], I feel I… there was a bit of an enjoyable feeling when I was driving.
“So I think, at least for so far, from what I experienced in the simulator, it’s a car that will suit me. I think actually, that car suits me well. So, yeah, it’s pretty good.”
Yuki Tsunoda, RB F1 Team VCARB 01
Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool
Since getting his break with Red Bull’s junior team in 2021, Tsunoda has been consistently overlooked for promotion to the seat alongside Verstappen. He has frequently voiced frustration at this, despite – in his words – “destroying” more than one team-mate.
The most recent RB driver to be dropped after failing to outperform Tsunoda was Daniel Ricciardo, a grand prix winner. And yet Ricciardo’s replacement, Liam Lawson, is understood to be just as strong a candidate as Tsunoda if Perez were to be cast out – and Red Bull bosses are understood to be looking outside the organisation’s young driver pool, too.
Tsunoda is under no illusions about what the post-season test represents, even though he has fought for it for so long.
“Throughout the year so far, how they see me from the Red Bull…
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