Yuki Tsunoda has been having a tough Formula 1 season at Red Bull, and that makes his Las Vegas mishap all the more difficult to take.
Tsunoda is 24-0 down on Max Verstappen in their qualifying head-to-head, but was a striking 3.340s slower than his team-mate in the wet Nevadan session.
It emerged that Red Bull set up wrong tyre pressures on its second car, with team boss Laurent Mekies owning up to “quite big mistakes” following qualifying.
By the end of the race on Saturday night, Tsunoda remained ostensibly unaware of how the error had come to be, and was pleading for answers.
“I want to know,” the Red Bull driver said. “I want to know why this thing... it was so basic stuff. It was by far out of the window. It's not talking small or anything. There's not much chance to be competitive with that.
“Also, I think it was avoidable. We couldn't avoid or at least improve in the session. It's something that we have to look at. We just literally threw it away.”
Tsunoda’s lowly qualifying result directly led to his point-less finish, which was another blow in his seemingly losing battle to keep his Red Bull drive, with Racing Bulls’ Isack Hadjar expected to be promoted.
The Japanese racer lies 17th in the championship, with 28 points to Verstappen’s 366, but found solace in his practice pace at Las Vegas.
“At least I've shown multiple times until qualifying – from FP1 to FP3, every session, performance run, I was fighting quite strongly against Max and multiple times ahead of him,” he claimed.
“It was something that they didn't see and I didn't have as well for a long time. It's something that I should take as a positive. My pace was amazing there. I mean, the incredible thing about Max is that he'll bring another level into the qualifying.
"But also, I had confidence as well, more than at any grand prix. Yeah, very [much a] shame. But the positive is the pace is getting there, improving. So, [it's about] doing the same in Qatar.”
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