Yuki Tsunoda: Together we made a great comeback

The AlphaTauri riders were able to somewhat make up for their poor performance in qualifying on Friday and on Saturday they did much better, especially Yuki Tsunoda, who took sixth place in the sprint in Sao Paulo.

Yuki Tsunoda (6th): “First of all, congratulations to the team! Yesterday was not the best day, but today we came back well thanks to our combined efforts. If in yesterday’s qualifying, which determined the starting order in the Grand Prix, we showed a 16th result, then in today’s sprint I started from 6th position, and this indicates that a step in the right direction has been taken .

The car made a good impression, it was fun to drive, but we have to find out what explains such a big difference in its behavior on Friday and Saturday.

There are a few parts of the lap where I could have ridden better, but I think I did my best lap on the last run of qualifying today and that put me in a good position for the sprint.

We took full advantage of this opportunity and achieved 6th place – this is AlphaTauri’s best result of the season so far. If the distance had been a few laps longer I might have been able to battle for 5th position with Charles Leclerc.

Today I am satisfied with both my performance and the pace of the car, especially on the sprint distance. Daniel also showed good speed, so it was an example of excellent work from the whole team.

I’m already looking forward to tomorrow’s race. We are in a good rhythm, so we will try to build on our success and achieve even higher speeds on the Grand Prix distance. It won’t be easy because we will start from further positions, but we know we have a good car, so we will try to regain as many positions as possible and fight for the points.”

Daniel Ricciardo (10th): “Today everything went better and we showed the speeds that, in my opinion, we were capable of yesterday. Looking back, I’m willing to admit that yesterday’s qualifying lap wasn’t the most successful, mainly due to my fault. I failed to make a good attempt just when it mattered.

But today the car felt much better on the Medium tyres, especially in the second part of qualifying before the sprint, and I was very happy with the lap I did.

But on soft tires I again had problems in the first two corners of the lap, albeit not as serious as yesterday, and I wasn’t very happy with my last attempt. But the 6th and 8th positions at the start are not that bad for us.

A sprint can certainly not be called boring. On the one hand, it was great that we were in the middle of the battle, and it gave me pleasure; on the other hand, i’m really upset. Of course, the car’s speed allowed him to fight for points, so congratulations Yuki, he earned them.

Every time I got ahead of Carlos Sainz in Turn 1, he then managed to overtake me with the help of DRS. Moreover, I am angry because of my own actions, because I “opened the door” for Oscar Piastri, who overtook me in Turn 8.

As for tactics, tomorrow I will try to execute my maneuvers more correctly. As the sprint progressed, some things changed in the car’s behavior, probably due to the peculiarities of the Brazilian circuit’s asphalt surface. But I think I was able to adapt my driving style well in the middle phase of the race.

In fact, in the last two laps we almost overtook Carlos. Unfortunately we were still two tenths behind at the finish. But on the positive side I’m enjoying seeing how we’re making progress with the car.

Today during the race I thought of a few things, but I will save this knowledge for tomorrow. We will analyze the images of the sprint and figure out how we can act to better plan overtaking actions and use our pace more effectively.”