{"id":1242,"date":"2025-04-02T04:58:19","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T04:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1242\/"},"modified":"2025-04-02T04:58:19","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T04:58:19","slug":"the-daniel-ricciardo-clash-which-forced-yuki-tsunoda-to-save-f1-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1242\/","title":{"rendered":"The Daniel Ricciardo clash which forced Yuki Tsunoda to save F1 career"},"content":{"rendered":"

Known for his hot-headedness, Yuki Tsunoda has admitted he needed to change his mindset after last year\u2019s Bahrain Grand Prix.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Japanese driver gave into the red mist during a moment on track with teammate Daniel Ricciardo, showing his anger in the way he drove his car.<\/p>\n

Yuki Tsunoda: I had to change my approach<\/p>\n

Tsunoda became well-known for being fiery over team radio during his first years in Formula 1, with the Japanese driver not afraid to shout expletives in frustration back to his garage and, thus, broadcast around the world.<\/p>\n

While it may seem harmless in itself, there was a sense that Tsunoda\u2019s temper was actively holding him back in his development as a racing driver and in 2024, he was overlooked for a promotion to the Red Bull F1 seat as the Milton Keynes-based squad plumped for the inexperienced Liam Lawson instead.<\/p>\n

Tsunoda had been the standard-setter for the VCARB team throughout 2024, scoring two-thirds of the team\u2019s points tally as Daniel Ricciardo and his replacement, Lawson, made up the remainder \u2013 but even this superiority wasn\u2019t enough to earn Tsunoda the seat.<\/p>\n

That was until Lawson proved unable to get to grips with the Red Bull<\/a> RB21 during the first two race weekends of 2025 and, with the team eager to score points with both cars, have opted to make a switch by promoting Tsunoda alongside Max Verstappen.<\/p>\n

Tsunoda will thus line up for the senior team at his home race this weekend in Japan, where Red Bull is rolling out with a bespoke white livery in tribute to Honda.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been quite the turnaround for Tsunoda, who, towards the end of 2023, was widely reported as needing Honda\u2019s intervention to hold onto his seat for the following season \u2013 such was the level of ambivalence towards him at that point.<\/p>\n

But Tsunoda has dug deep to improve on his temper control, with Racing Bulls\u2019 CEO Peter Bayer telling PlanetF1.com that the 24-year-old had improved in a significant way, saying, \u201cHe has improved by 1,000 percent on that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is so little of that outrage that he [had] because he understood. He understood that every F was costing him a tenth. Yuki knows, and he\u2019s there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The prime example of Tsunoda\u2019s anger in 2024 came at the first race of the year, with an intra-team swap order angering Tsunoda to the point where he dive-bombed Ricciardo and accelerated in anger dangerously close to his teammate\u2019s car.<\/p>\n

Sarcastically thanking his team over the radio, Ricciardo showed his displeasure with the moment as he said,\u00a0\u201cWhat the f*** is wrong? I\u2019ll save it\u2026 f***ing helmet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking to the UK\u2019s Independent<\/strong>, Tsunoda has said he realised he needed to change his mindset if he was to hold onto a seat in Formula 1.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mindset would be to take my stress out on the track and then focus afterward,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese days, F1 is more political and has more sponsors. You need to find a balance. You don\u2019t want a driver shouting emotions; the team wants to hear specific feedback.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to change my approach for the future after what happened with Daniel in Bahrain last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cOtherwise, I wouldn\u2019t be sticking around in F1. It\u2019s the one area I\u2019ve worked really hard at \u2013 and it\u2019s helped change my mindset and be more serious.\u201d<\/p>\n

More on Red Bull\u2019s in-season driver swaps<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49 All the mid-season driver swaps Red Bull have made in their F1 history<\/a><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49 Hit or miss? Rating Red Bull\u2019s previous in-season driver swaps<\/a><\/p>\n

With Tsunoda carrying out a test in last year\u2019s RB20 after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko explained that this outing hadn\u2019t been critical in deciding upon Tsunoda for the remainder of the F1 2025 season but pointed to how the young driver has become a more rounded competitor.<\/p>\n

\u201cYuki had his highs and lows,\u201d Marko said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember his two crashes in Mexico [in 2024], for example. He was simply not as stable as he is now.<\/p>\n

\u201cLawson had driven only 11 grands prix and in this situation he could not perform anymore.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the other hand, Yuki was \u2013 crazy as it sounds \u2013 very strong in his fourth season.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis personality, he is physically much stronger, he seems hugely confident and delivered two great races.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy we didn\u2019t wait any longer? Well, we want to win the fifth world championship with Max.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe car is tricky and not the fastest. It is important then to have a second driver who can support us strategically in races and contribute to the development of the car.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Next: Liam Lawson issues fresh statement after brutal Red Bull swap<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Known for his hot-headedness, Yuki Tsunoda has admitted he needed to change his mindset after last year\u2019s Bahrain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[859,227,225,858,12,861,226,79,16,15,860],"class_list":{"0":"post-1242","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-daniel-ricciardo","9":"tag-helmut-marko","10":"tag-home-page","11":"tag-japanese-grand-prix","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-peter-bayer","14":"tag-red-bull","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-yuki-tsunoda"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114266603792776038","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}