Yuki Tsunoda believes that he could have qualified in the top five at the Bahrain Grand Prix, but has insisted he will learn from the mistakes he made on his Formula 1 debut.
The talented Japanese driver looked at home across the race weekend in Bahrain and finished the race in ninth to earn his first points in F1.
Heading to Imola for round two of the championship, Tsunoda and his teammate Pierre Gasly will be hoping to build on the potential their AlphaTauri car showed in Bahrain.
Based in Faenza, the team will travel just 11 miles to get to the famous circuit, and Tsunoda is keen to “maximise that advantage” he has gained from testing at Imola regularly.
“It won’t be a problem in Imola, as I have driven there a lot and so I can work in a similar way to what I did in Bahrain,” he said. “I will use the experience from the first race and I already have confidence in the car in Imola.
“I will start the weekend gradually building up my pace. That will be the key, because you don’t want to make a mistake in FP1 which will make you lose your confidence.
“Because we have driven there before the season, as a team we can just focus on car set-up and try and maximise that advantage and hopefully we can have a good result. It’s important as it is a home race for the team and even for me, it feels like home.”
While Tsunoda was generally impressive in Bahrain, he failed to make it into Q3 after opting to run on the medium tyres during Q2.
Despite not pulling the strategy off though, he insists it was the correct move by the team.
“In our qualifying in Bahrain, I have no regrets about our strategy, because being committed to trying to get through to Q3 on the medium tyre was a good experience and for the team it was a new challenge to try and use that tyre,” he added.
“I learned a lot from that, even if I had expected I could have been higher up the grid with the potential to be top five or top six.”
Following his debut last month, Tsunoda revealed that he has gotten a big reaction from fans across Europe.
“It was interesting that after Bahrain, I think I got a bigger reaction from European fans than from those in Japan,” he said.
“It’s a cultural thing: Japanese fans want to see what I do in a few rounds before getting a proper impression. I was surprised at that reaction in Europe. I didn’t expect it, because for me, Bahrain was not a perfect weekend and I was hoping to finish higher. I am happy about the fans’ support, but I don’t feel pressure because of it, I take it as something positive and this weekend I will just get on and do my job.”