Yuki Tsunoda explains why he’s so ‘impressed’ by RB chief Alan Permane

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Yuki Tsunoda is driving brilliantly in the 2024 Formula 1 season and is comfortably ahead of his RB teammate, Daniel Ricciardo, in the championship standings.

The Italian team haven’t broken into the top 10 in the last two races but scored points in all but three of the events before the summer break with Yuki Tsunoda leading the way ahead of Daniel Ricciardo in the Drivers’ Championship.

Tsunoda was unhappy with his car at Monza and was taken out of the race by Nico Hulkenberg after a difficult weekend.

RB is developing into a strong midfield outfit capable of scoring points on most race weekends, and the team is managed by an experienced group of people.

They signed Alan Permane as racing director ahead of this season and Laurent Mekies, who spearheads RB as team principal.

Permane, in particular, has been able to pass on his wealth of experience in Formula 1 since 1989 with Benetton and develop the team.

Yuki Tsunoda believes Alan Permane sees things ‘three steps in the future’

Permane has had massive success in his career. He has been an engineer for drivers such as Jarno Trulli and Giancarlo Fisichella and spent more than 34 years at the Enstone-based in its various guises.

This experience has been vital in the steps forward RB have made this season after spending much of last year near the back of the field.

Tsunoda has been delighted to work with Permane and learn from the RB chief, although the Japanese driver admitted he sometimes struggles to understand the 57-year-old.

READ MORE: Helmut Marko explains why Yuki Tsunoda was ‘extremely unhappy’ before his Monza crash

The RB driver told the Formula 1 Beyond The Grid podcast: “Sometimes I just struggle to understand things because he saw a lot of things two steps, three steps in the future.

“I’m still trying to process and understand the current situation one step further. He just easily goes three steps, four steps further. So that’s the one thing I’m impressed a lot about him.”

Yuki Tsunoda has significantly improved over his Formula 1 career

The 24-year-old joined Formula 1 ahead of the 2021 season at AlphaTauri and was consistently behind his teammate Pierre Gasly.

Despite his lacklustre first year, the team retained Tsunoda, and he is now comfortably beating Ricciardo with eight races left this season.

The Japanese driver is part of the Red Bull family although Tsunoda is unlikely to race for the Red Bull team over the next couple of years.

This may force him to look elsewhere to challenge further up the field as RB has never been a front-running team and is more focused on training young drivers.