Yuki Tsunoda uses one word to describe how difficult RB’s updates have made the car to drive this season

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The 2024 Formula 1 season couldn’t have started any better for Yuki Tsunoda and Visa Cash App RB.

The Japanese driver came into the season under pressure coming up against F1 race winner Daniel Ricciardo at RB.

Ricciardo made it clear his dream was to return to Red Bull, something Yuki Tsunoda is also aspiring to.

However, Tsunoda scored points in five of the first eight Grand Prix and was comfortably sitting in the top ten of the Drivers’ Championship while Ricciardo only scored points once in that time – during the Sprint Race in Miami.

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It was enough to earn the 24-year-old a new one-year contract which will extend his time with the team to five years.

However, both Tsunoda and Ricciardo have struggled since the Spanish Grand Prix, with both drivers securing a best finish of 9^th since that race.

RB brought a serious upgrade to Spain but unfortunately, it’s not had the desired effect.

Tsunoda was on the Beyond The Grid Podcast and was asked about the impact of the new parts on his car.

He tried to be as positive as he could be but that’s easier said than done when other teams around you are making progress while you’re going backwards.

Yuki Tsunoda gives his verdict on RB’s 2024 update packages

Journalist Tom Clarkson asked Tsunoda how the upgrades introduced in Barcelona affected the car and whether they made it more unpredictable to drive, to which Tsunoda simply replied: “Unpredictable, yeah.”

When Clarkson mentioned this was a trend across the grid, Tsunoda elaborated and said: “Yeah, I think with the current generation of the car, with the downforce level and also the ride height we are driving with, the wind effect is quite high as well.

“It doesn’t mean that you go faster. The load through the corner from entry to the exit has to be consistent as much as possible.

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“Even if you had a massive load in entry, if you sacrifice that, for example, [in the] mid part of the corner load and goes to the entry load, you want it to balance each other. You can’t take one or the other.

“So, if I say in a simple way the Barcelona upgrades, we have too much load in some part of the corner and because we take some load from another part of the corner to try to increase the load, the part we think is the best.

“But because the load difference through the corner was too big, it just feels unpredictable and was just very hard to drive.”

Helmut Marko explained how unhappy Tsunoda was with RB’s 2024 updates

The Italian Grand Prix couldn’t have gone much worse for RB as they watched rivals Williams and Haas score points.

Tsunoda failed to get out of Q1 before Nico Hulkenberg crashed into him and ended his race at the first chicane.

Hulkenberg was pushed off the track by Ricciardo on the opening lap and the Australian was handed a penalty as a result.

It got even worse for Ricciardo after one of his mechanics touched his car as he was serving his initial penalty, meaning he received an even bigger punishment which ended his chances of scoring points.

Marko said after the race that Tsunoda was extremely unhappy after Monza and it’s up to the team to find a solution to the problems that their updates have caused.

It’s a very similar situation to the senior Red Bull team who have watched their advantage in the Constructors’ Championship slip away.