Yuki Tsunoda was caught off guard during the Qatar Grand Prix on Sunday after he mistakenly registered VCARB’s warning of a ‘mirror’ on the track as a ‘beaver’.
The mirror in question belonged to Alex Albon. The component flew off the Thai driver’s FW46 and wound up resting just to the right of the racing line on the approach to Turn One. Double-waved yellows were deployed, and drivers were informed to avoid the errant car part.
Tsunoda, however, must have had a very different picture in his head. Revealing the radio communications within the VCARB camp, he explained: “Was it mirror? I heard beaver. My engineers said: ‘There’s a beaver.’
“But why is there a beaver in the Middle East? Like how is it possible a beaver is in the Middle East? But okay, maybe there’s a surprise with global warming – kicking a lot of interesting things in the Earth.”
Tsunoda’s experience in Doha was a frustrating one. Only 15 drivers finished the Grand Prix on Sunday and multiple safety cars shuffled the order late on, giving opportunities for teams to register significant point hauls. While Alpine, Haas and even the previously pointless Sauber team finished in the top 10, VCARB had no presence.
The Japanese driver was classified in P13, while team-mate Liam Lawson’s race was even more tumultuous. He picked up a 10-second time penalty for a collision with Valtteri Bottas and took the chequered flag in P14.
Lambasting his pointless outing at the Lusail International Circuit, Tsunoda said: “Yeah, I had a good start as well and I was P9, able to overtake [Fernando] Alonso as well after the safety car. But I never had like that much of a bad pace.
“I just gave it everything, you know, I was not even managing the tyres. In Qatar, normally it’s hard to overtake with the car behind, and it seems like a lot of cars [found it] quite easy to overtake me. Just generally lack of pace, and it’s not even small.”
VCARB now find themselves on the back foot in a tense battle for sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship standings. With tens of millions of pounds up for grabs the pressure is on heading to Abu Dhabi.
Prior to the race in Qatar, Alpine, Haas and VCARB were all in close quarters, but the recent heroics of Pierre Gasly and Kevin Magnussen’s resilient display in Doha mean that the Faenza-based constructor is now 13 points off the pace.
