Yuki Tsunoda critically reflects on handing Red Bull its first achievement of the season

Yuki Tsunoda drew a critical review of his first point-scoring race with Red Bull as he marked a P9 finish in Bahrain last week. It was a tough day for the team as it faced multiple issues with the car and pit stops, hampering its chance for a competitive finish.

Red Bull replaced Liam Lawson with Yuki Tsunoda after just two races into the season, following the former's subpar performance against his teammate. However, the transition wasn't quite smooth for Tsunoda as he finished out of points in Japan, marking his debut with RBR. Heading into Bahrain, the RB21 didn't look competitive again, but he managed to pull it into points with a P9 finish.

"I’m happy for the first points," Tsunoda said (via F1).

However, considering the pace he had, Yuki Tsunoda felt he could have extracted more from the car. Moreover, he pointed out the pit stop issues that Red Bull faced, adding:

"It’s always the feeling that I could have done better. Especially in this race, the pace was quite good, and I could have done a slightly better job than this one. Also, the team could have done a slightly better job in terms of pit stops. I don’t know what happened there as well."

Tsunoda and Max Verstappen had to go through extremely slow pit stops because of a technical issue that the team was facing. This hampered their chance of a finish within the top five.

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Yuki Tsunoda hopes for a better qualifying position in Saudi Arabia

Heading to Jeddah for the final race of the triple header, Tsunoda revealed that although he is not keeping any fixed goals, he does hope to qualify in a better position, which could help him finish higher.

"I’m sure maybe more difficult race weekends will happen, and that will be the most important time for me to see how I will cope with that. Still a lot of challenges ahead but I’m ready for it," Tsunoda said.

"I am not setting a specific goal for Jeddah yet, it’s just about keeping doing what I am doing, I hope to do slightly better in Qualifying and that should make my life easier," he added.

Compared to the McLarens, the RB21 has a much better straight-line pace but loses time in most corners. This was the case during the Bahrain Grand Prix, where Yuki Tsunoda's best lap time was a little over two seconds slower than race winner Oscar Piastri.

Considering Jeddah, the circuit is filled with fast-paced corners and straights. The latter would be much more profitable for Red Bull, where they could launch an attack on their rivals, but the drivers would have to extract the most out of the car to maintain that strength heading into the sharp corners.