Yuki Tsunoda can’t believe his luck: “Everything’s going against me”

Yuki Tsunoda has claimed everything is going against him, following further hardship at the Las Vegas Grand Prix amid a tough Formula 1 season.

Tsunoda qualified 19th after Red Bull made a mistake with his tyre pressures in qualifying, and the team decided to breach parc ferme to tweak his set-up and give him a new power unit for the race.

Starting from the pitlane, the Japanese racer pitted on the first lap and switched from the medium to the hard compound, but that was shortly before the race was neutralised by the virtual safety car, which two of his rivals took advantage of.

Tsunoda ended up one of very few drivers on a two-stop strategy, which didn’t pay off as he finished a lowly 14th – which turned into 12th when the McLarens were disqualified.

The Red Bull driver wasn’t even satisfied with the set-up tweaks to his RB21, and clearly feels like he can’t catch a break.

“The thing is, the safety car came in right after I pitted, so it's not ideal. What we were trying to achieve with that was trying to get off dirty air, but the safety car came in and multiple people just rejoined the track in front of me, so there were no points,” Tsunoda said in the post-race media pen, though he still beat both of his direct rivals who pitted then, and ended up 16 seconds away from the points regardless; his deficit to 10th was 28 seconds before the McLarens were disqualified.

Yuki Tsunoda, Red Bull Racing

“It feels like everything so far is going against me, the luck and everything,” he lamented. “I don't like the word luck, but this weekend feels like it's really bad luck. It's a shame and frustrating that I wasn’t able to use my pace until qualifying. Just throwing it away.”

Although there is little evidence backs it up, Tsunoda reckoned he would have been “close to the points” without the virtual safety car. “I lost so much time with that,” he claimed, before he was able to review the race.

Tsunoda was struggling to find any positives after such a dismal weekend, which left him down in 17th in the drivers’ standings as team-mate Max Verstappen’s title bid comes alive with yet another victory.

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“At least we changed the engine; something to look forward to for the next few grands prix,” Tsunoda added.

Asked by Motorsport if that was a benefit for the last two rounds, he replied: “I hope so. I think it's performing better than what we were seeing before. We have to qualify properly, but it seems like it.”

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