Scuderia AlphaTauri’s, Yuki Tsunoda, was unable to convert his ninth-place starting position to a points finish at the Miami Grand Prix, citing that he “struggled with pace” from the start and couldn’t recover the positions lost. He ended up finishing twelfth after being promoted a position due to Daniel Ricciardo’s five-second time penalty.
“I’m really disappointed with today. On the first lap I struggled with pace and was overtaken by a few cars, then I wasn’t able to recover from there for the rest of the race.”
Tsunoda was able to move up the timesheets with each practice session, a positive trend that saw him go from eighteenth to thirteenth to eleventh, followed by a solid qualifying that allowed him to reach Qualifying 3.
He said that the team had “built-up confidence” in the AT03 and its abilities on the brand-new track since the start of the weekend, which added to the disappointment of his inability to score points after a solid showing at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
“We were happy with the way that we’d built up our confidence in the car from FP1, so it’s frustrating to have performed so poorly today.”
“We’re obviously disappointed” – Pierre Gasly
Team-mate Pierre Gasly, was likewise unable to score points, as his race was compromised by incidents leading to his retirement. His race was going smoothly until lap thirty-nine, when Fernando Alonso made contact with Gasly into Turn 1, which resulted in damage for the AlphaTauri car.
A few laps later on lap forty-one, Gasly said that the damage caused made it “impossible to stay on track”. On the way to the pits he made contact with Lando Norris, which sent the McLaren F1 Team driver into a high-speed spin, ending the race’s of both drivers.
“It’s a big shame today, the race was going well until the contact with Alonso, where we suffered damage on the car. Unfortunately, it was impossible to stay on track after that, as the car was too damaged, and then on the way back to the box Norris and I touched.”
Gasly said that although his race didn’t go as planned, the Miami race brought some encouraging take-aways– he said the car’s performance was “quite good” as well as his start. Having started from sixth, he would have hoped to convert the grid position to points. He will certainly want to replicate his Miami qualifying performance and earn some more points in coming race weekends.
“There are some positives to take away from today still, we had a strong start and the pace of the car was quite good, but we’re obviously disappointed with today’s result.”
