Yuki Tsunoda has been told what he needs to do to keep his Formula 1 career alive between now and the end of the season.
The Japanese is a Red Bull junior currently racing in his second season with sister team AlphaTauri. But it has not been an enjoyable one, with the team struggling to provide a competitive car for Tsunoda and team-mate Pierre Gasly.
The Frenchman summed up his team's woes when he labelled the Austrian Grand Prix a "disaster" and pleaded with his team to make improvements. He said: "At the moment there is just nothing to do, so I think we desperately need this upgrade on the car to be able to get any decent result."
Gasly has already proven, though, that when the car is performing better he is capable of scoring the regular points that AlphaTauri needs in its midfield battle. Tsunoda's current contract expires at the end of the season, and there is speculation over whether he has done enough to secure a third year.
Angry outbursts over team radio while he is supposed to be concentrating on racing have led to Red Bull hiring a psychologist to work with the Japanese, who was labelled as a "problem child" by team advisor Helmut Marko. AlphaTauri chief Franz Tost says he prefers someone like that to a "holy child", but still wants to see more from Tsunoda.
"I like problem children because these are the real good children who can make something out of it. I don't like the holy children," said the Austrian. "Yuki made a mistake, he knew it and he will work on this. He is still in his development process. He is fast and he will do his way. It takes a little bit of time."
And referring to Tsunoda's future, Tost made it clear that it is entirely up the the racer himself to decide how whether or not he will still have a seat in F1 in 2023. "If he continues like he did during the season, apart from crashing, I think he has a good chance to stay with us," the AlphaTauri chief added.
"It depends on him. If he shows a good performance he will stay, if he doesn't show a good performance, he is out. Totally easy. You can see the gradient of his learning curve is really going up. He is doing a good job but he has to get himself under control in certain situations, be more disciplined and then we will see in the second half of the season."
