There is a joyful exuberance to Yuki Tsunoda that is almost magnetic. The Japanese driver has brought dash and verve to Formula One and has been unafraid to pepper it with expletives. Refreshingly the 20-year-old, one of F1’s most exciting prospects, is unrepentant.
His rise has been positively meteoric but tangling at the sharper end of a grid populated by four world champions and some exceptional talent besides holds no fears for Tsunoda. “When I am racing I do not think about them,” he says without hesitation at the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari before this weekend’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in Imola. “Every driver is the same for me, they are the enemy. I don’t think about whether they are world champions or that it is an honour to race them, not when I am driving.”
After only one race Tsunoda has drawn plaudits from across the paddock. He scored points on his debut for AlphaTauri at the season opener in Bahrain. His driving caught the attention as did his occasional swearing over team radio; F1 apparently shocked at a young man venting publicly with such unabashed brio.
Tsunoda, who grew up in Sagamihara City, chuckles gently – surprised at the interest his colourful grasp of English has attracted – but sees no reason to neuter his character behind the wheel.
“When I am gaming with my friends I swear a lot in my house in Japan,” he says. “I go more crazy than in racing – like throwing the controller – I made two holes already in my apartment. I broke a couple of things which is double stress for me. In racing I always have passion, I am more serious about the racing so it’s easy to swear but at the same time I am really focused.”
His former team boss in F2, Trevor Carlin from the Carlin team, even offered his belated apologies to the AlphaTauri principal Franz Tost, albeit tinged with pride. “Yuki has spent a year with a bunch of British mechanics learning all the British swear words,” he says. “Which I think Franz was a bit shocked about with Yuki effing and blinding on the radio. But he genuinely enjoys racing, he is fiercely loyal, he will embed himself in the team really well and is like a sponge for knowledge.”
F1 needs characters and Tsunoda is a breath of fresh air, with an infectious enthusiasm backed by talent, ambition and a mature work ethic. In Bahrain, with AlphaTauri enjoying a very competitive car, he started from 13th, made a poor opening lap and dropped to 17th before coming back strongly to claim ninth. His performance was lauded, not least in becoming the first Japanese driver to score points since Kamui Kobayashi in 2012.
Tsunoda began karting when he was four and encouraged by his father continued doing it for fun until he was 10 when he began to take driving seriously. He was taken on by Honda in 2016 and competed in two full seasons of Japanese F4 in 2017 and 2018 when Red Bull made him part of their junior driver programme. He then spent one season in F3, graduating to F2 in 2020 before promotion to AlphaTauri this year.
His rise has been remarkable but reflective of his talent. He is fiercely competitive. At Bahrain his comeback included a dive past Fernando Alonso for a place and mugging Lance Stroll on the last lap to clinch ninth. It was celebrated but in character for Tsunoda. In the final race of last year’s F2 season at Bahrain he similarly passed Dan Ticktum on the final corner of the final lap to take second place. Tsunoda is relentless. “He never gives up, he fights to the very, very end,” Carlin notes.
Tsunoda has come this far under no little pressure. Red Bull’s director of motorsport, Helmut Marko, has set hard targets for him to reach in order to be retained. Unsurprisingly he has shown an extraordinary ability to learn and improve with alacrity.
His F3 year was his first living outside Japan and even with an uncompetitive team, he managed to win a race. In F2, Marko had mandated a top-three finish which Carlin believed was a tall order for any rookie until he saw how good the Japanese driver was. Indeed he is convinced that Tsunoda could have won the title, he was the top rookie and the absence of errors was notable. If it had been decided on the feature length races alone – those most similar to F1 – he would have done so and he did secure third.
At his F1 debut, however, he made his mark on a much grander palette. F1’s director of motorsport, Ross Brawn, described him as the “best rookie F1 has had for years, fairly stunning in whatever series he has competed in”. Even the notoriously hard to impress Marko was moved to offer high praise. “We are convinced Tsunoda will be the first Japanese driver to win an F1 grand prix,” he said. “His mentality is also great, he has incredible self-confidence. I am convinced we will see him on the podium soon.”
It seems Tsunoda has it all. He is unafraid to throw his car into a pass but has the maturity required to ensure his skills progress. “We only had to explain something to him once and he would go and do it – the perfect pupil,” says Carlin. “Race craft is one of his greatest strengths. It is very rare to find a driver who can apply what they are told immediately, some think they know better, some just can’t do it, some don’t understand but Yuki just went and applied it. He is the full package, he really is. I am convinced he will be on the podium this year. He is just born to be a racing driver, he finds it very easy to deliver. The sky is the limit for him.”
Tsunoda will be confident this weekend at Imola, a track where he has tested extensively. This is a home race for AlphaTauri whose Faenza base is only 12 miles away and there is a sense that despite coming so far, so fast, this is only the beginning of something special. Certainly Tsunoda’s enthusiasm remains unbridled and long may it remain so.
“I always come to the track to go faster, of course that puts more pressure on me but that pressure works well to focus,” he says. “People think I was happy to score my first points, I was happy but I was thinking more about what I could improve. I knew I could have got a better result in Bahrain, the car was there and top five was easily possible. I have some regrets and a lot of things to learn, even immediately after the race I was thinking: ‘Where can I improve?’”
Valtteri Bottas led his Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton in first practice at Imola, with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in third. The top three were closely matched, separated by only five-hundredths of a second. In the afternoon Verstappen suffered a setback, losing almost the entire session when he came to a halt with a driveshaft problem. Bottas was on top once more, one-hundredth ahead of Hamilton, with Tsunoda an impressive seventh.
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