Red Bull feels "a bit more tricky" than it did in the simulator

Yuki Tsunoda admitted Red Bull’s car is trickier to drive in real life than it is in the simulator, after his first run in it today.

However the team’s new driver showed promising pace in the first practice session for the Japanese Grand Prix. He lapped just a tenth of a second slower than team mate Max Verstappen.

Tsunoda was a victim of the heavily disrupted second practice session as he was not able to set a representative lap time. He ended up 18th on the times sheets, 10 places behind Verstappen.

“FP1 was better than expected,” Tsunoda said afterwards, “a good start for myself. But in FP2 I didn’t set a lap time.”

“I think lots of work to do, maybe I slightly struggled or there’s something that we have to look [at more] through data in FP2. But so far overall it’s okay, I just have to build up confidence more.”

After being called up to replace Liam Lawson in Red Bull’s line-up from this weekend, Tsunoda had only driven the team’s 2025 in the simulator before getting behind the wheel for the first time today. He said the real machine was a little harder to handle than the simulation.

“It’s a bit different to the simulator, what I felt, to be honest, maybe a little bit more than I expected in terms of car feeling,” he told the official F1 channel.

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“But I knew anyway it’s always going to be a bit different in the real car, and it was just a little more exaggerated in the car, feeling a bit more tricky.”

Verstappen ended the day’s running eighth fastest, half a second off the pace. He said he isn’t fully comfortable with his car yet.

“Today’s been quite difficult for me, just trying a lot of different things with the car, but it seems like a lot things are not really clicking at the moment,” he said.

“It’s quite difficult just to put the lap down. You need a lot confidence and commitment around here, and at the moment I don’t feel like I can use that, so we still have a bit of work to do.”