“I think we’ve got a good baseline” – Yuki Tsunoda

On the second day of the Official Pre-Season Test at the Bahrain International Circuit, it was Yuki Tsunoda behind the wheel of the AT03 for Scuderia AlphaTauri.

The young Japanese driver completed an impressive 120 laps across the day, a strong performance by the likeable driver. Whilst timings are somewhat irrelevant during testing, Tsunoda’s best time on the day was a 1:36.802, which saw him finish tenth place at the end of the second day of testing.

Tsunoda enjoyed the day and believes he learnt a lot about how to drive the car in different conditions, the wind played a strong part during the second day.

“It’s been a good day of running with a lot of laps and important mileage completed, allowing us to collect crucial data. We didn’t focus a lot on performance runs today, we had a race simulation where we concentrated on our long running and got to understand the car more in race conditions. It was really windy out there, with the direction changing throughout the day, so I had to learn more about driving this new car with all the different conditions we had, it was quite hard to adapt to this, but I really enjoyed it.

“I think overall the day has been positive, we still have some areas to work on, but I think we’ve got a good baseline and I’m looking forward to some more driving tomorrow. We still need to work a lot on the final day so that we can be confident going into the first race, and hopefully have a good result.”

“We found some interesting directions” – AlphaTauri’s Jonathan Eddolls

AlphaTauri Chief Race Engineer Jonathan Eddolls is very pleased the team completed their entire plan for the day with minimal issues, Tsunoda produced plenty of data for the team to look over.

“It was Yuki’s turn in the car today, the focus in the morning was on aero mappings before we got into a block of mechanical set-up tests. The start of the day was very windy and dusty, alongside having the expected high track temperatures, so it was difficult to get a good balance throughout the lap. We found some interesting directions from the test items completed, which we will analyse in more detail tonight and use to help define the test matrix for the final day tomorrow.

“After lunch we got straight into an uninterrupted race simulation using all three tyre compounds, which was useful for not only Yuki but the rest of the team to help us prepare for next week. The car was reliable throughout, the mechanics were efficient with the turn arounds, and this allowed us to complete the entire plan, finishing on 120 laps and 649.44 km. For the final day, we will split the duties across the drivers, with Pierre in the morning and Yuki in the afternoon, which will be the final eight hours of running before the first race weekend of 2022.”