Why Tsunoda wasn’t to blame in Mexico’s F1 qualifying controversy

Horner’s outburst came after the AlphaTauri driver was believed to have ruined the all-important final qualifying laps for stable mates Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen, allowing Mercedes a surprise lockout in the front row.

But was the Japanese rookie really to blame?

While it often happens in other phases of qualifying, it rarely happens that a driver drives a slow in-lap right at the end of Q3 when everyone else is full throttle on what is supposed to be their fastest lap of the weekend.

That was due to AlphaTauri’s strategy. Tsunoda had a penalty for an engine change behind the grid and so went into qualifying with two goals – ahead of the three other drivers who had similar penalties (Lando Norris, Esteban Ocon and Lance Stroll) to get 17th on the grid and help his teammate Pierre Gasly in tow.

We have seen some similar situations in the last few races as several drivers suffered engine penalties on the same weekend. Most of the time, however, the towing only goes until Q2, because drivers who have been penalized do not get into Q3 and want to undertake to start with the “wrong” tire from the end of the grid.

On that occasion, both Tsunoda and Norris made it out of Q2 – the McLaren driver did so on the favored medium tire without compromising. But Tsunoda had to take it easy and undertook to use a tire at the start that everyone else wanted to avoid with all their might.

The upside for his team was that Gasly had a tow truck for the crucial final run in the third quarter, and that’s what it worked towards.

The strategy meant that once Tsunoda had done his job and pulled Gasly down the long pit straight, he had to lap, knowing that many fast cars would come up behind him on their final hot laps. If the worst comes to the worst, he would have to leave both Ferraris, both Red Bulls and both Mercedes.

Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri AT02, Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri AT02

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Here is a timeline of the radio traffic between Tsunoda and his engineer Mattia Spini at the end of Q3 as he neared the end of the prep round trying to create a gap between himself and Daniel Ricciardo.

Team: “Hold your position, it’s good, stay there.”

TSU: “I’ll give Ricciardo the pressure.”

Team: “You are doing very well, so everything is fine.”

Tsunoda then easily dropped back from Ricciardo as he reached the section of the stadium while Gasly positioned himself behind to get the tug.

Team: “OK, nobody is chasing after, so it’s a good time to close this gap. We now have two seconds. Six seconds now we’re good. Charge and press. “

Tsunoda then raced down the straight with Gasly behind. In the end he jerked to the right and let the French through. He’d done what was asked and stepped aside like a pacemaker in a 1,500-meter run.

After really slowing down, Tsunoda then crossed the complex from Turn 1/2/3 and drove on the straight to Turn 4. Now it was important not to risk a penalty by obstructing another driver.

Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri AT02

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

Team: “OK, good job, Sainz is 12 behind.”

Then he crawled around turns 4, 5 and 6.

Team: “Sainz seven behind, pushing. Stay negative. “

On the short straight that followed, he came to a standstill almost completely, so that he wanted to avoid the Ferrari driver as much as possible.

This negative news was important – it was actually in a hurry, as Spini reminded him not to drive too slowly and to maintain the minimum speed required for an in-lap.

Team: “And then four of us have Perez behind us, who pushes. Urge. “

Tsunoda was now in the fast food area, which is all too easy to get in each other’s way. To avoid Perez, he accelerated briefly and then drove straight into the run-off zone at Turn 10 to leave a clear lane for the Red Bull driver. It’s a normal move under such circumstances – but it threw up a huge cloud of dust.

Team: “Perez behind you. And stow three in the back. F ***! “

At that point Spini realized that Perez had gone off the road and joined Tsunoda in the runoff, and that both cars had then possibly disrupted Verstappen’s close lap.

Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri AT02

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

After a pause, Tsunoda said, “I mean, I really let him pass … I didn’t do anything.”

Spini continued to monitor the approaching cars while his driver drove down his back straight to the stadium.

Leclerc and Bottas drove past on the straight, and after entering the stadium, Tsunoda made a sharp left and crossed the paved infield, giving Hamilton a clear run through the twisting spots. Then he drove into the pit and came to a stop in the pit lane, where the radio conversation continued.

“I couldn’t do anything,” he said.

“You see, you gave him space,” said Spini. “You couldn’t do anything more. Understood.”

Then Spini added, “So Yuki, we’re P5 ahead of Norris and Gasly. So very nice work. “

Spini may have tried to maintain a positive vibe, but the adage had already hit the fan when reruns of the incident were shown and a fruity radio message was played from Verstappen.

After abandoning his final lap and realizing that his dream of starting from pole in his home race was over, Perez said nothing until he got back into the pit lane and stopped at Parc Ferme. His message was short but not sweet: “Ahhhh, damn it.”

Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing RB16B

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

When he got the two cars off the road, Verstappen had picked up the phone briefly, expecting a yellow that never came.

The marshals on the corner understood the importance of shouting yellow with cars in the final laps and instead acted like a referee who went on with the game and didn’t whistle for a foul.

Verstappen soon realized there was no yellow, but the damage to his lap was already done before he got stuck in the stadium at Turn 13. Then he wobbled on the pit straight. After crossing the line, he said, “Oh for God’s sake, what happened in front of me?”

“Not exactly sure,” replied his engineer Gianpiero Lambiase. “Slow button on, please Max. Tsunoda has just parked it, I don’t know, so Checo had to drive back.”

“Unbelievable, such a stupid idiot,” replied Verstappen.

Shortly afterwards, the Dutchman explained the further course of events at the press conference.

“I don’t know what happened before me, but it must have been Yuki who first stopped Checo and then of course they both had to go far,” he said.

“They arrive so quickly that it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what is happening. I just saw a lot of dust so I thought a car crashed and now with the yellow flag rules I got caught with it here in Mexico [in 2019], I withdrew a little.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, in Parc Ferme after qualifying

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“And then there was no yellow flag, so I kept pushing, but of course that’s already two and a half tenths gone. So my round was almost finished. “

Horner quickly added his opinion and said, “I don’t understand why he only drove around this part of the route. It’s disappointing because it hit both drivers, because they’re both pretty annoyed. “

The momentum was picking up now, and Tsunoda was widely viewed as guilty, though not all who rashly understood that he had gone off the road to get out of the way.

When he met the media immediately after qualifying, he wasn’t sure what exactly had happened. However, when the potential consequences of angering Red Bull management became clear, he looked like a deer in the headlights.

“I didn’t screw up the Red Bulls,” he said. “Just a mistake in itself. I don’t know Max? Did I stop Max too? “

He showed a video clip of a team member and said, “I went outside and couldn’t do more than that. I mean, I don’t know where should I go?

“If I had another chance, I would do the same. I do not know what to do? Do you think I did something wrong? “

Perez said he left because Tsunoda had given him the lead.

“Yuki was just ahead,” he said. “I think I was a little too close and I’ve already lost a little too much because we’re driving at the high speed and it’s pretty difficult to get through when you have a tight car in front of you. And unfortunately I lost it there. “

Yuki Tsunoda, Alpha Tauri

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

If Tsunoda was running slowly, would the aerodynamics have really been that great? Or was it more the case that Perez was only briefly distracted by the huge cloud of dust that the AlphaTauri threw up when entering the runway, which Tsunoda could not foresee?

Perez was right on the edge, battling for pole in his home race with a car that, frustratingly, wasn’t as good as it was a few hours earlier when he was leading FP3.

He also had to dig deeper to test the surprising pace of Mercedes in qualifying. It didn’t take much to tip him over that ledge and send him off the road.

Don’t forget how unusual it is for a driver to drive slowly at the end of the third quarter. Perez didn’t expect to come across a slow moving car actively trying to avoid him, and his team didn’t tell him to watch out for a slow car. Like Verstappen, he saw the dust and guessed there had been an incident.

In the end it was idle. While Horner found that both drivers had overtaken their previous times ahead of Tsunoda, they weren’t going fast enough to knock Bottas and Hamilton out of the front row, as Toto Wolff pointed out.

“I think at that point sector one and sector two were behind,” he said. “I think it was about two tenths or two and a half tenths.”

The bottom line was that it was just one of those things, and it was also important that there wasn’t even a reference to an FIA investigation. A few seconds either way and Tsunoda would have landed on a straight when Perez and Verstappen passed and it wouldn’t have been a problem.

Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing, and Christian Horner, Team Principal, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

It was an unfortunate coincidence that the cars affected were the two Red Bulls. The incident created some tension between the AlphaTauri and RBR camps, and it was clear that Franz Tost was not happy that his husband had to take such verbal blows from all sides.

“I absolutely don’t understand why Perez went off the track there too,” he said.

“Like all drivers, Yuki moved to the side in qualifying to get a seat for the cars that are in a qualifying lap. He wasn’t in a qualifying round.

“It’s that simple. That’s why I don’t understand anything about it.”

Franz Tost, Team Principal AlphaTauri, in the team principal’s press conference

Photo by: FIA Pool