Yuki Tsunoda's start to the season has been very decent. He has managed to finish twice in the points and has finished 11th three times. Ahead of the Azerbaijan GP, Roksana Ćwik spoke to the AlphaTauri driver about this year's championship, the confirmation of the departure of long-time team principal Franz Tost, his F1 career so far, the chaos in Australia and more.
Since yesterday (April 26th) we know that Franz Tost will leave the team at the end of the year. Laurent Mekies will replace him as a Team Principal. What is your opinion about that?
First of all, I saw the news on social media, that was the first time I knew about it. It kind of confirmed what I was thinking, but I just put it inside my head, and I didn't believe it. Also, I didn't care much about it because I had just lunch with him 5 days before that news, and he didn't mention it, and apparently we were talking about it in opposite ways.
Was that a surprise for you?
Yeah, I was surprised, and obviously, it's sad. But at the same time, I still have 19 races to go to make him happy. It's not over yet, and I want him to be happy at the end of this season. I got an extra kind of target now that I want to make him happy at the end of the year. I will try to do what I was doing in the last three races, even slightly more, and we'll be okay. For the new manager, to be honest, I haven't spoken with him yet. Of course, we chatted a couple of times before, but I don't know him yet, how he is like, what are his characteristics, but I'm always feeling welcome. To be honest, it's hard to say now because he's still far away from coming here, he's still doing the Ferrari job. In any case, I'm feeling excited.
This is your third season at AlphaTauri. You started your career in 2021 with the old F1 car specification and then had to learn it all over again after the regulation change. What is the most significant difference, and what was the greatest challenge with such a change?
The new thing was new tyres, and a slightly different characteristic of car behaviour. But driving itself - I didn't have to change much, so that was good, I still can push a lot. I actually had a different task, which was to provide more comments and feedback to improve the car in terms of development through the year. We completely started it from scratch, and the team developed the car from zero. We kept developing, so that was kind of thing that we didn't do in 2021 with old spec of a car. I actually enjoyed it, kind of challenging, new things for me, which was really nice, but in terms of driving, I didn't have to change much.
You started the season with a double 11th place finish, then in Australia you got one point for 10th place. What do you think of the start of the season, as a driver in AlphaTauri and in general?
As a driver, I'm pretty happy with it. I think I have always been on the borderline of points, but I feel more improvement compared to last year, which is good. I think I kept improving race by race since last year, so I still didn't lose that momentum. As a driver, I'm pretty happy with it, I just have to continue, I want to have score as many as possible points. At the same time, the thing is that we are struggling with the car, so I also have to give good feedback to the team to help steer them in the right direction and point out what they need to develop in the car. But so far, as for myself, I'm pretty happy. Also for the team, we're struggling, but at the same time, everyone looking at the same targets, we're on the same page, and we're always feeling positive, so it's all good. And I’m enjoying it.
Last year there were some problems with the brakes, how is it this year, this season? When I spoke to Pierre a year ago, he told me brakes, brakes, brakes.... How does it look now? Is it a bit better, do you not have any problems with them?
For the brakes, so far, I'm okay. I think last year we struggled a little bit more than usual, but I didn't struggle as much as Pierre. The warm-up was also important, so how you do a warm-up with the brakes affects a lot in the first lap. Pierre struggled maybe with the warming up the brakes, but at the same time, the truth is, I also struggled a lot with the brakes. But this season, I would say more towards the performance, downforce, load from the floor, and also the drag. In terms of drag, we're losing a lot of lap time and speed on the main straight, which is almost everywhere. We need to develop more towards bodywork and the floor to increase the load performance. At the same time, we want to decrease the drag, which is a challenge for the future, but we have a lot of development plans, so I'm pretty excited. I'm looking forward to it.
Getting back to the subject of Australia, I would like to ask about the big red flag chaos. As a driver, what's your take on it?
I mean, first of all, I don't know what was the background of that situation, why they red-flagged it. Maybe there was a severe situation that they had to really take cautiously, or they had to remove some of the barriers or whatever. I didn't know why they completely stopped after the restart again because there were only 2 laps remaining anyway. Of course, there was a massive crash, which happened in turn one, turn two. But at least they could do a safety car, and we can finish behind it. We could properly finish the race, rather than stop each time and create the show or whatever. In the end, we finish behind the safety car, so it really makes much difference. To make it more simple and less complicated, from my perspective, I think it was easier just to do safety car after restart and just finish following the safety car, without having red flag and just stop completely.
We have new asphalt in Baku, which is quite surprising because last year it was very smooth, and yet it has been changed again. From your point of view, what does this change for the driver?
I think it wasn't smooth enough. Especially on the main straight – we were bouncing like hell, and we complained a lot about that. Particularly, Mercedes was complaining in terms of purposing; Lewis and George had issues with pack pain. We don't have that in the race, so I think resurface is a good choice. We have to see exactly how they changed the track, but obviously for the drivers it's better, so we'll see, but hopefully, it will change a lot.
One last question, Orlen is from Poland and I have to ask this, do you feel any changes since last year and now, is it mainly about sport or is there something more?
The main change was in terms of colour – now we have a lot of red, looks more aggressive. And I like Orlen because they're really supportive, they came to the launch event in New York. It was the first time I had a bit of media activity with them. It was really fun, and I know they're really supportive and really passionate about motorsports. Also, in terms of other categories, so I'm really happy to have them, looking forward to having another event in two weeks.
We're waiting in Poland to see you!
It will be the first time I will go to Poland, the country itself. I’m looking forward to enjoying that.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you!
