Tsunoda feels Racing Bulls ‘deserved points’ in Australia as team admit late-race strategy call ‘cost us very dearly’

Yuki Tsunoda felt Racing Bulls deserved to score a hatful of points on Sunday in Melbourne, with the Japanese driver running in sixth position for the majority of the race. But a “not ideal” strategy call let them down when the late rain fell, meaning they left Australia empty-handed after watching some of their biggest rivals score valuable points.

Up until Lap 43 on Sunday, Tsunoda’s weekend had been going swimmingly. Fast throughout practice, he had bagged fifth on the grid for the race and only lost out to Charles Leclerc at the start.

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Running sixth through the first and second stints, he seemed on for a good haul of points – until the rain arrived. As the two McLarens slithered off the track and chose to box for intermediates, the Racing Bulls crucially opted to leave their man out for another few laps in case the rain eased off.

That proved to be the wrong call – as while Tsunoda climbed up to second, the time he lost skating around on the wrong compound cost him hugely and he emerged from his pit stop outside the points.

“In terms of how I felt in the car and how I drove, I felt we deserved the points,” Tsunoda said after the race.

“I’ve done whatever I could have done, the weather just didn’t come towards us with the timing and everything, and suddenly I dropped to P11 after [the] Safety Car after I rejoined the track. So, timing didn’t go for us and definitely a shame that we didn’t score points.

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“It’s not ideal, but we can take a lot of positives from this weekend; we had pace and, if we can maximise performance, we can have a good race weekend. We’ll just have to keep performing like this and come back strong.”

The biggest disappointment for Racing Bulls isn’t just the fact they failed to score – but that three of their rivals brought home big points. Williams grabbed 10 points, Aston Martin eight and Kick Sauber six in a season that is expected to be incredibly closely fought.

Tsunoda added that the conditions “weren’t easy”, and that was shown by his team mate Isack Hadjar, who was left distraught after sliding off into the barriers on the original formation lap. The rookie was later comforted by Anthony Hamilton in the paddock after failing to make the start of his maiden Grand Prix.

He said that he felt “embarrassed” by the incident, but team boss Laurent Mekies was quick to support his rookie driver.

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“He will learn from this and turn his frustration into good energy for the next race. We will be here to support him over the next few days before Shanghai and not let this cloud all the positives we can take from this weekend,” Mekies commented, before saying the team would shoulder the blame for Tsunoda’s strategy.

“Yuki was performing very strongly until the rain returned. There is nowhere to hide, we got our last call wrong, and it cost us very dearly today. For this we apologise to Yuki; the gamble to keep him out didn’t pay off but it’s part of the harshness of motorsport.”