Tsunoda closes gap to Lindblad lap by lap as Racing Bulls praises Dutch GP adaptation

Yuki Tsunoda has earned praise from Racing Bulls after steadily closing the gap to rookie team-mate Arvid Lindblad across each session of the Dutch Grand Prix sprint weekend at Zandvoort, with the team describing itself as “pretty impressed” by how quickly the 26-year-old has adapted to F1’s new 2026-spec cars.

Tsunoda is back at Racing Bulls as a stand-in for Liam Lawson, who was promoted to Red Bull after Isack Hadjar injured his wrist during the summer break. The Japanese driver had not previously driven the new generation of machinery, making his rapid improvement across the weekend all the more notable.

The numbers tell the story of his adaptation. Tsunoda was 0.825 seconds behind Lindblad in the sole free practice session, but trimmed that deficit to 0.433s in SQ1, 0.360s in SQ2, and then just 0.011s in Q1 — before finishing 0.102s adrift in Q2. He ultimately qualified 12th, missing Q3 by a tenth of a second, and crossed the line 11.5 seconds behind Lindblad in the sprint race.

“Honestly, I’m super happy,” Tsunoda said after qualifying. “Yesterday’s qualifying was okay, but I didn’t know where was the limit still, it was still a fresh car. But this qualifying was a bit more like a proper qualifying, able to trust more the car and throw the car into the corners. I know where I can improve much more. But honestly, I missed this kind of feeling, the chasing last few milliseconds, last few tenths, and I’m super enjoying it.”

The 2026 cars present a significantly different challenge to their predecessors, combining a revamped chassis and aerodynamic package with more complex energy management demands. Tsunoda was candid about the scale of the adjustment required.

“It’s a completely different car,” he said. “The brake feeling — I stepped into the VCARB simulator, and the first thing I felt, when I braked like last year, I was in the wall. The amount of pressure, those limits, it’s different. And downforce especially is also different. Also deploying energy, where to discharge and everything, suddenly you get deceleration from the car. Those things, it was not easy to adapt.”

Despite those challenges, Tsunoda said he got up to speed faster than anticipated. “To be honest I was able to get used to it faster than I expected. So I’m pretty satisfied with what I’ve done,” he added.

The sprint race provided 24 laps of valuable learning, which Tsunoda said fed directly into his qualifying improvement. “Every single lap I was able to learn, and I think I was able to prove that in this qualifying, every single session I was coming closer and closer,” he said.

Missing Q3 by such a slim margin was a minor frustration, but Tsunoda acknowledged the team’s broader satisfaction with his weekend. “The team obviously wanted both cars to be in Q3,” he admitted, “but from yesterday, they were pretty impressed with what I’ve done.”