Michael Italiano: Yuki turned out to be a great guy!

This year AphaTauri rider Yuki Tsunoda will be coached by Australian specialist Michael Italiano, who previously worked with Daniel Ricciardo. In a podcast produced by the Faenza team’s press office, he shared how he prepared Tsunoda for the season during a training camp in Dubai.

Michael Italiano: “Dubai was nice because before that Yuki and I only spoke for about an hour – after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on tire test days we sat down and chatted over a coffee. For starters, I just had to get to know each other and find out if I was a good fit for Yuki.

The training camp in Dubai was not only important in terms of training, but especially for building normal working relationships. Since we didn’t kill each other there, we can assume that a good start has been made. Dealing with Yuki isn’t easy (laughs).

Although I liked his enthusiasm, which is shown in relation to food. Personally, I love food and am always hungry, so I liked that he started asking questions right after breakfast: “When are you having lunch? And when is dinner?

It was also great in Dubai because it is summer in my home country of Australia right now, and since we spent two weeks in the Emirates, this time I was able to avoid the cold European winter, which I don’t like.

I can’t complain about Yuuki. I gave him very intense workouts, but every day he was ready to start again, even though his muscles ached. We didn’t have a single rest day and his training ability was at a higher level than I thought. And even envy, because I wanted to be 22 years old again!

Overall he’s in good shape…”

At that point, Tsunoda interrupted the conversation: “The only thing that made my abs hurt was laughing! Michael and I laughed a lot!”

“He really hurt his abs because at the beginning we were constantly laughing because we were teasing each other,” Italiano continued. – Actually it was great! Seriously, it was important for me to understand whether Yuki can handle a regular schedule of such workouts, and how he reacts to my way of working. My working method is very different from what he is used to, because in Formula 1 every coach has his own style.

We spent a lot of classes with him, paying special attention to strength training, and now I know the level of his abilities – this is already good. These two weeks have been important for both me and Yuki. Of course, his physical preparation pleasantly surprised me.

Usually he says frankly that he hates working out, but in fact he knows how to force himself. Immediately after getting up, we did a warm-up, after breakfast we went to the gym, did strength training, then we took a break for lunch, after which we either went to the pool or played football on the beach, and then paid attention to working out of reaction, endurance or some other activity. .

Yuki didn’t try to dodge, didn’t make excuses to skip workouts, didn’t whine when I let him cycle for a long time or train his shoulder girdle muscles, because these are serious burdens. Besides, he’s an excellent cyclist and it was hard for me to keep up with him. All this made a very good impression on me.

I didn’t know if he was going to hate me after all this, but mostly he just said, “Okay, we’re going to work out.” So I repeat: we did even more than I expected. It’s very important that it clicked quickly – Yuki turned out to be a cool guy!