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Yuki Tsunoda made his thoughts loud and clear on his early elimination from the United States Grand Prix sprint qualifying.
“The timing of the garage exit was not even close,” he said to F1 TV pundits after leaving the paddock area. “I don’t know what’s happened there, to be honest.”
After his first hot lap wasn’t enough to secure him a spot in the top 15, Tsunoda was stuck in traffic around the pit lane exit while the clock ticked down for SQ1. This meant that he wasn’t left with enough time to complete an out-lap before starting a second timed lap to try to advance to the next session.
In the end, he qualified in 18th, matching his result from the Miami sprint qualifications.
Afterwards, Tsunoda described the situation as “very frustrating,” and laid the responsibility on the Red Bull pit wall.
“It’s not like it’s a thing I can control, to be honest… It was more so up to them rather than myself, you know, managing the timing. So yeah. Yeah, it’s pretty shocking.”
Tsunoda is currently without a guaranteed seat in F1 for next year, and is battling for a chance to stay within the Red Bull organization, either in his current team or with the sister team VCARB.
His biggest competition is most likely Liam Lawson, as Isack Hadjar looks set to take over as Max Verstappen’s teammate next year. Lawson was eliminated in SQ2 after failing to set a lap time due to going over track limits.
On a brief moment in which the two came close to touching wheels in SQ1, Tsunoda brushed the incident off, saying that it was just “[Lawson’s] usual, nothing more,” before emphasizing that his biggest obstacle on Friday afternoon was his own team instead.
While he will have another chance at qualifying for the main race on Saturday, this surely puts Tsunoda in a tough spot, for the weekend and his future.
The full sprint qualifying results are below:
Cover image via Red Bull Content Pool.
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