The essential quality F1's star rookie has to harness better

There ended up being rather a lot to celebrate about the rookie class of the 2001 Formula 1 season.

So far, it’s racked up four world titles, 60 grand prix victories, two Le Mans 24 Hours triumphs, plus four Daytona 24 wins, an IMSA Sportscar title, two NASCAR Cup wins and two Indianapolis 500s. Two of the group are still racing in F1, 20 years after their debuts…

But if 2021’s F1 rookie class are to have any hope of matching the combined records of Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen, Juan Pablo Montoya and, not forgetting, Enrique Bernoldi, they’re going to have to do one thing. And that’s leaving the ‘classic rookie errors’ in their wake.

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Make no mistake, Yuki Tsunoda, Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin have a very difficult job in 2021. They’re doing their learning in the unforgiving glare of the F1 spotlight – for good and bad reasons – in carryover cars that most of their rivals gained experience in last year, and errors are of course going to happen. In the Emilia Romagna GP, both of F1’s current leading lights made mistakes that could have cost them the race, and in Lewis Hamilton’s case, definitely did lose him the chance of fighting for it to the end.

But what will make the difference for the future careers of the 2021 rookies – possibly setting them on the road to such longevity as most of their 2001 predecessors – is how quickly they leave the typical F1 newcomer mistakes behind and go on to grab headline results.

One of the trio has already done the latter and now Tsunoda needs to set about achieving the former.

His points-scoring result on debut in Bahrain last month was magnificent. It featured a series of battling moves that were capped by his last lap mugging of Lance Stroll, which secured his P9 and embodied an excellent ‘never give up’ attitude. In 2020, Tsunoda worked hard to improve his in-race mental strength, which made him calmer.

Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri AT02, Fernando Alonso, Alpine A521

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

But given his AlphaTauri squad’s pace – right now it just edges McLaren and barely trails Ferrari as F1’s fourth fastest car based on supertimes calculations – the Bahrain race could have been more. Team-mate Pierre Gasly qualified an impressive fifth, having brilliantly got through Q2 on the mediums – which only the Mercedes drivers and Max Verstappen also managed. Gasly threw away that hard work in his early clash with Daniel Ricciardo and it was attempting to secure the superior medium-starting strategy that led to Tsunoda dropping from second in Q1 to 13th on the grid and out in Q2.

At Imola next time out, he missed his target of a maiden Q3 appearance with his big crash in Q1 and then in the race ruined his recovery with a spin just after the safety car restart, eventually coming home 12th when more points were possible. But each of these mistakes has contained something very positive for Tsunoda.

"I asked them to do the same strategy as Pierre. Because I had good confidence to got to Q3 with the medium tyre because the car was performing well" Yuki Tsunoda

Red Bull motorsport advisor, Helmut Marko, put his Imola qualifying crash down to being “overconfident”, while AlphaTauri technical director Jody Egginton said the crash that followed Tsunoda getting on the throttle a fraction too early on the Variante Alta kerbs was “part of the rookie journey”. But it’s the reference to confidence that’s key.

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Consider Tsunoda’s answer to Autosport’s question about even attempting to get through Q2 on the mediums – no mean feat for a non-‘Class A’ squad – in his first F1 qualifying session: “The team had a big question mark for me to go to Q3 with the medium tyre, but I asked them to do the same strategy as Pierre. Because I had good confidence to got to Q3 with the medium tyre because the car was performing well.

He added: “I asked them to let me use the medium tyres to challenge to go to Q3. But actually, it didn’t work well. I couldn’t go to Q3 because of not just the medium tyre, I felt a little bit [of a] strange feeling with the second set, but we solved that problem. The experience I got in Q2 in Bahrain was really good for me for the future, which I have to improve for me.”

Again, “confidence”. It just exudes from Tsunoda. The question coming out of his starring rookie season in F2 with Carlin, whose eponymous team boss Trevor even predicted the early-season incidents, was whether he could adapt quickly to the F1 environment. Well, judging by his demeanour in the media spotlight and his excellent team radio swearing, he’s having no problem settling in at the highest level.

Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri in the Press Conference

Photo by: FIA Pool

Tsunoda has so far been fearless – his Imola race spin came a split-second after he’d opportunistically passed Hamilton of all people. After his points in Bahrain, F1 sporting boss Ross Brawn labelled him, in reality probably too early, “the best rookie F1 has had for years”. But there’s every reason to suspect he has the potential to go on and prove he’s indeed as good as the very high-quality new drivers F1 has welcomed in recent years – Verstappen, Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris and George Russell.

Another answer he gave at Imola was revealing. Fielding a question from a young F1 fan about how it felt finding out he was going to be racing in the championship, Tsunoda said: “It was, to be honest, pretty normal!”

Here’s why. “It feels like a dream come true,” he added. “But at the same time, my dream was not to be a Formula 1 driver, my dream is to be a Formula 1 champion. So, for me to become a Formula 1 driver is the path for me. It's like, part of that journey.

“Of course, to be a Formula 1 driver you still really need good luck and also need really good race results from the junior categories. I was really happy and I really feel honoured especially from Japanese [fans] like after Kamui Kobayashi [who left F1 after four seasons in 2014] there was not any drivers in seven years. So, I feel honoured, but like I said it's still really important to get good results after you become a Formula 1 driver.

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“So even after I went back to Japan last year after [the 2020 F2 season finished in] Bahrain, I was preparing for the season – I was just training harder than before. For me, the day [I found out I was to be an F1 driver] I was happy – [it] was just only the day I heard I had become a Formula 1 driver. The day after I was just really focused to the racing and prepare for [my F1 debut in] Bahrain.”

Such ambition is nothing new in F1 – there’s really no point in even trying to crack a career so difficult and expensive if the ultimate achievement isn’t the number one aim. But it was the way Tsunoda explained himself that was so striking. Again, confidence.

The Japanese driver’s motorsport journey is already very much in motion. Now, he needs to begin demonstrating the fast learning that so impressed his F2 team last year to ensure he takes the right path of driver development. If he does, anything is possible.

Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri AT02

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images