Tsunoda: Strong pace in Vegas – but ‘I couldn’t really show it’

Yuki Tsunoda has never lacked confidence, but his Las Vegas Grand Prix debrief may have set a new personal lap record for optimism.

Despite starting from the pit lane, finishing outside the points again, and watching Max Verstappen win the race he himself called one of his best weekends, Tsunoda insisted his performance was top-tier — hidden brilliance, thwarted only by fate, tyre pressures, traffic, and presumably bad desert karma.

According to the Japanese driver, results may lie, but his stopwatch certainly doesn’t.

Tsunoda’s weekend began with a Q1 exit courtesy of incorrect tyre pressures – a hiccup that sent him straight to a pit-lane start.

Even after both McLarens were disqualified, he rose only to 12th in the final classification. But the 25-year-old was adamant that none of this should cloud his true form.

“The [Virtual] Safety Car [was called] right after I pitted. So that’s not ideal at all, and that’s it really,” he said, stating the obvious.

“I stayed in the dirty air afterwards because people came into the pits. It feels like everything is so far going against me.”

Never mind the race result; Yuki clearly wanted everyone to focus on the bits that don’t actually count, boasting that he was on several occasions, faster than Max Verstappen... in free practice.

“Multiple times – FP1, FP2, FP3 – in multiple laps, I was ahead of Max in performance runs,” he claimed.

“I think [that’s] something that I didn’t have and we didn’t see probably for a long time.”

Those sessions, of course, are known for their famously unreliable fuel loads, tyre mixes, and general irrelevance – but Tsunoda was ready to take the win where he could get it.

Timing Sheets Don’t Win Races

To his credit, Tsunoda did concede that Verstappen tends to become something else entirely when the serious stuff begins.

“Obviously one of his strengths is he’ll bring the car on his level, to another level in qualifying, which is his strength,” Tsunoda noted — which is one way of saying “world champion things.”

Still, he insisted he brought his own upgraded version of himself to Vegas qualifying. But it all still went wrong.

“But also, I had confidence as well into qualifying [that] I can perform better than the other race weekends, and these things happen,” he explained.

“I think the pace I’ve shown until qualifying was good and qualifying was just completely not in my control and a lost opportunity. It’s tough.”

And finally, the classic Tsunoda coda – equal parts hope and frustration:

“At least the pace itself, I guess, is going in the right direction but it’s frustrating that I know I couldn’t really show it in the result.”

Red Bull Takes the Blame

Red Bull team boss Laurent Mekies, diplomatically avoiding any commentary on Tsunoda’s Verstappen comparisons, admitted the team itself contributed to the problem.

“Obviously, with Yuki we lost the points yesterday. We know that,” Mekies said. “And hence we tried to take a bit more risk and to be different compared to the field.

“We knew that otherwise we would just be stuck in traffic. So we tried to pit him very early to give him some free air.”

• Read also: F1i Driver Ratings for the 2025 Las Vegas Grand Prix

Free air – something Tsunoda insists he could’ve used to reveal his inner Verstappen, at least for a lap or two.

But as 2026 looms, with Red Bull poised to reshape its driver lineup around the real title hopefuls, Tsunoda’s Vegas optimism reads somewhere between brave and delusional.

If this was truly one of his “best” weekends, he might need several miracles – and more than a couple of fast free practice laps – to avoid being shuffled off the stage when the lights go out on the current regulations.

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