Dakar Rally News: Yuki Tsunoda Believes He Could Have Led Brazilian Grand Prix
In a thrilling display of wet-weather driving at the Brazilian Grand Prix, Yuki Tsunoda of the RB F1 Team believes he would have taken the race lead had the safety car and red flag periods not interrupted the proceedings.
Tsunoda, who was running in third position before his pit stop, opted to switch to extreme wet tires as the rain intensified at the Interlagos circuit. Along with his teammate Liam Lawson, the duo were setting blistering lap times, lapping nearly five seconds quicker than their rivals on the intermediate tires.
“I think what we did, switching to extreme, that was good. Just the safety car and the red flag came out, that was the point that went very down. If the red flag didn’t come out, probably I would, at some point, have overtaken a lot of cars and maybe [been] P1, but it just didn’t come towards us.”
The safety car and subsequent red flag, called after Franco Colapinto crashed his Williams while trying to catch up to the pack, proved to be a turning point in the race. The red flag allowed drivers to change tires, negating Tsunoda’s strategic advantage.
Despite the setback, Tsunoda managed to finish the race in eighth position, which was later upgraded to seventh after a 10-second penalty was imposed on McLaren’s Oscar Piastri for an earlier incident with Lawson.
“It wasn’t easy conditions. If you lose concentration, [it can have] a lot of consequences. I enjoyed the last stint, good fight with Oscar [Piastri]. I tried to be within 10 seconds. You know, could have done a lot of things wrong, but kept it clean and tried to score P7, which is good.”
The strong performance from the RB F1 Team at the Brazilian Grand Prix keeps them in the hunt for sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship, although they lost ground to the double podium-scoring Alpine team.
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