Tsunoda: The race was difficult, but in the end we were lucky

In Austin, Yuki Tsunoda finished tenth and also scored the best lap of the race, for which he earned an extra bonus point. Daniel Ricciardo, returning to action after a break of almost two months, was unlucky: the Australian claims his car was damaged, and this greatly affected the pace.

Yuki Tsunoda (10th): “Of course I’m happy that I finished in the top ten and earned an extra point for the fastest lap. But I have to admit that the race was difficult, but in the end we were perhaps lucky when Fernando Alonso retired.

But the team has also done everything to show the highest possible result, and I am satisfied with our work. I have confidence in myself and although 10th place is a very modest achievement, we were still able to earn points.

Now it is important for us to keep the momentum going because there are still four races to go and a lot can happen, so we have to keep attacking.”

Daniel Ricciardo (17th): “My car was damaged and we don’t even know exactly what caused it. When we switched to hard tires the pace started to drop sharply after a few laps and I radioed to the team that there was nothing I could do. On the almost new Hard set the pace was the same as on the heavily worn Medium tires.

Then my engineer said they found some damage, I think it was related to the front left suspension. At first they assumed that this was the result of contact with Stroll’s car, but I don’t think there was such contact. I suspect the problem was more likely because there was some dirt stuck somewhere in the car or something like that.

I think the damage was quite significant because the pace dropped quite a bit. This of course caused me major problems – you could say that we basically didn’t participate in the race at all and just kept going in laps.

After discussing the situation on the radio, we decided to make another pit stop to see what was going on with the car and try to solve the problem. But even after switching to soft tires I didn’t feel like the situation had improved significantly. Presumably it was not possible to completely solve the problem, so this remains to be resolved.

Everything went well at the very beginning. We opted for an alternative tactic and on Medium tires our pace was quite comparable to the pace of Yuki and the cars around us. But towards the end of the first segment, we started seeing blue flags more and more, which caused us to lose even more. And after the pit stop I found myself in traffic. By the way, I think we could have picked up some debris then that would have caused some damage.

I don’t really want to admit that I became a passenger after that, but that was the case in the second half of the race. Although the race results look terrible, overall we performed well. Of course there are some points that I personally need to work on, but there are some points that we need to improve together with the team, although I think this is quite expected as this is only the third race we have done together. However, I tend to view the experience behind the wheel of a car as more positive than the other way around.”