Tsunoda left “quite confused” by gap to AlphaTauri teammate Gasly

While Gasly followed up a P6 finish in FP1 by ending the day third-quickest behind the Mercedes duo and just 0.252s down on Va൩ltteri Bottas’ benchmark, Tsunoda endured a miserabꦍle pair of practice sessions at Sochi.
The 21-ye𓃲ar-old𒆙 Japanese rookie was only 16th in the morning and dropped to P18 in second practice as he ended up over two seconds slower than Gasly.
Tsunoda conceded he had no explanation for the large performance gap to his teammate and said he will need to “look more de𒐪eply” 🤪at the issues he faced.
“The balance is not too bad, just th👍e general grip… or something like, I don’t know, we have to figure out the difference between m🍎y team-mate [and me],” he said.
“My team-mate is doing a really good job, he’s P3, 🐓top five, and on🦂 the other side I’m in P18 or something like that.
“Yeah, I mean, just have t𝓡o look more deeply what’s the issues there. Yeah, currently, I’m quite confused.”

Gasly was in an understandably buoyant 🐼mood given the performance he wa🦄s able to extract from his AlphaTauri car.
“I think we had a fantastic day with the꧂ sixth [best] time this morning and third time this afternoon,” the Frenchman said.
“In terms of performance, it seems to work well, so I’m really happy about it. Inside the car it is still not easy, not feeling 100% comfortable with the balance and [there🐓’s] quite a few things to improve.”
And Gasly is eyeing an opportunity to land a big result for the team given that both Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc will be starting at the back on Sunday due to their resp🐓ective engine penalties.
“W🦩e know Charles [Leclerc] is taking a penalty as well [as Max Verstappen], so there’s going to be some opportunities.
“At the moment we’re focusing on our package and 𓂃the main focus for us is the two Alpines, they are fast as well, we saw Fernando [Alonso] and Esteban [Ocon] put in some fast laps.
“So I expect a tight battle with them as it’s important for us to start catching t🌌hem in the championship.”

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