The current generation of Red Bull cars have become notoriously difficult to drive. So much so that even Max Verstappen has stuggled ot get to grips with them of late, despite his dominant championship success in the ground-effect era. Even many paddock insiders have called out the balance issues of the cars, as Liam Lawson has become a victim of their difficulty.
Red Bull recently demoted Lawson to their sister team, Racing Bulls, as he was nowhere near comfortable in the RB21. Now, ironically, the Faenza-based outfit has often produced more tamable machinery. In fact, this season, the V-CARB 02 has done seemingly better than the RB21.
With Lawson’s demotion to Racing Bulls, Yuki Tsunoda has been thrust into that second seat alongside Verstappen, and the Japanese racing ace has had to adapt to the quirks of the Red Bull car.
Now, with two race weekends under his belt at the Milton Keynes outfit, the #22 driver has pointed out why the Red Bull cars can be a handful to handle as compared to the Faenza-based team.
“The VCARB has a much wider window in which the car operates. It almost doesn’t matter what you do; this car can handle any kind of balance pretty well. But the Red Bull probably has a certain kind of setup, a certain window in terms of tires and everything, and that narrow window is really hard to hit,” he said as per Motorsport-Total.
Yuki Tsunoda: “The thing is, the VCARB has a much wider window in which the car operates. It almost doesn’t matter what you do; this car can handle any kind of balance pretty well.”
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Lawson had faced the brunt of this issue in his short-lived Red Bull career—at the Australian GP and the Chinese GP. After only two squalid outings, the Kiwi driver was sent back to the sister team to rebuild his confidence.
Having said that, it would appear that Tsunoda is faring better at taming the RB21 than Lawson. At the Japanese GP, he was able to progress out of Q3—something that Lawson hadn’t managed at all.
The Bahrain GP last weekend was another step forward for the #22 driver, with him qualifying in the top 10 and taking the chequered flag in P9 to secure points—something that Lawson had also failed to achieve.
But despite some strong performances by Tsunoda, his arrival at the team coincided with crisis bells going off. After the race at the Sakhir International Circuit, the team had to call an emergency meeting given the dire straits they find themselves in, in terms of out-and-out pace and performance.
