Yuki Tsunoda admitted having overconfidence after his weekend in Bahrain, saying that it gave him a false sense of security.
Tsunoda debuted in F1 at the beginning of 2021. The opening race in Bahrain saw him put in an absolute shift and impress everyone watching. The hopes for him were sky-high, and he was primed to have a great rookie season.
However, the next few races saw the Japanese drivee bottom out and suffer lacklustre results. Both his pace and character were steps behind his teammate’s, with the lowest of lows coming when Red Bull called his attitude out and transferred him to Italy.
Tsunoda admitted having overconfidence after his weekend in Bahrain, and said that his result there made him think F1 was a little simple.
As quoted by GP Fans, when asked if he thought F1 was easy to navigate after Bahrain, the AlphaTauri driver said, “To be honest, yes.
“I would say I had too much confidence. I was feeling (it was) too easy, I will say for Formula 1 because so far I didn’t have like massive shunt things, strange things. All was completely under control, that’s why I was expecting (it to be) easy.
“But as soon as I had a crash in Imola…actually, after Imola I was okay still. My confidence was okay.
“I just felt that instead, the incident I had in qualifying was just unlucky, and also I expect it’s going to happen before the braking zone.”
Learnings
“As soon as I began crashing consistently, I started to feel like (there was) a question mark about my confidence and also it started to feel quite difficult, much (more) difficult than I was thinking,” he continued.
“I was always trying to nail it, or try to push from the first push in pre-practice, which in Formula 1, it’s not necessary to do that, because there are only three free practice (sessions).
“This time, especially in Formula 1 if you do that, there’s a lot of risk that you go into the wall and lose a lot of track time and also have to rebuild the confidence and lots of things are going to be negative.”
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