Tsunoda qualifies 12th on Racing Bulls return after eight months away from F1

Yuki Tsunoda qualified 12th for the Dutch Grand Prix sprint at Zandvoort on Friday, marking his competitive return to Formula 1 after eight months on the sidelines as a reserve driver for Red Bull and Racing Bulls.

The Japanese driver was called up after Isack Hadjar suffered a wrist injury during the summer break, forcing his withdrawal from the Dutch Grand Prix weekend. Liam Lawson was temporarily promoted to Red Bull, leaving Tsunoda to inherit Hadjar’s seat at Racing Bulls.

Entering his 115th career grand prix, Tsunoda completed 35 laps in practice and went 17th-fastest, with an eight-tenth gap to rookie team-mate Arvid Lindblad. He steadily closed that deficit through sprint qualifying — cutting it to 0.433 seconds in SQ1 and 0.360s in SQ2 — to secure 12th on the sprint grid.

“To be honest, everything really feels like a rookie — brake pressure, everything is a lot different to the previous year,” Tsunoda said after the session. “You have two sets of tyres, you don’t want to damage the tyres straight away, so it was pretty tricky. But in the end, I’m pretty satisfied with the performance I had in sprint qualifying. Obviously, a couple more things I can improve, but this kind of format, you want to gradually build.”

This was Tsunoda’s first experience with 2026-spec machinery, which features completely new engines with 47% electric power, making energy management significantly more demanding than on the previous generation of cars.

“Most of the drivers were a little bit struggling with the balance and the brake performance and the amount of downforce that this car lost compared to last year,” Tsunoda acknowledged. “I’ve driven last year’s car, which is probably one of the fastest cars in history, and I enjoyed it so much in the TPCs. But going to this car feels a lot different, especially in high-speed corners.”

With only the top eight finishers scoring points in the sprint, Tsunoda indicated his priority for the 24-lap race is data-gathering ahead of Sunday’s main qualifying session and grand prix. “My main objective is tomorrow in qualifying,” he said. “So far, I think I’m able to build up session by session pretty good. I’m excited for the long run tomorrow — that’s what I need for all of the data before qualifying and the race.”