Talent to swear by
The youngest driver on the F1 grid, Yuki Tsunoda has been known to lose his cool on the team radio, yet the impulsive 21-year-old has the self-belief to finally break a Japanese driver into the winner’s circle. Adam Cooper interviews the country’s great hope – without an expletive to be heard...
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It was no surprise to some that Yuki Tsunoda took points from his first F1 outing with AlphaTauri at Bahrain in March
RED BULL CONTENT POOL, HONDA
CAN YUKI TSUNODA BECOME THE first Japanese driver to score a grand prix victory? That’s certainly the view of his main backers, and if he continues on his planned progression and eventually joins Red Bull Racing, the opportunity to win races will be there.
Tsunoda has already made a little bit of history by becoming the first driver born in the 2000s to make it to F1. It’s been far from an easy transition with AlphaTauri – incidents and colourful radio messages have attracted as much attention as his pace – but those who know him well agree that he is a fast learner, and he will get there.
“He had a stupid mistake in Imola,” says his number one supporter, Dr Helmut Marko. “Now he is a little bit more careful. We are fine with him. Progress is as planned.”
“He coped with every situation we threw at him,” says his 2020 F2 team boss Trevor Carlin. “He’ll invariably lose a few front wings in the first few races, because you’ve got to adjust to the car, and he will be pushing. But once he’s got through that phase, he’ll be very hard to beat.”
Tsunoda’s interest in cars was inherited from his father, who worked in insurance. In 2007 the family went to the Japanese GP, where the top three qualifiers were his current F1 rivals Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Räikkönen. “Before I was born my dad was doing motor sports in Japan,” he says. “Just lap times with a normal car, or a tuned car. I started karting when I was four years old, and when I was seven years old I went the first time to Fuji to watch F1.