Yuki Tsunoda reveals ‘hybrid’ RB car for British Grand Prix after Austria revelation

Yuki Tsunoda sat in the cockpit of his VCARB F1 car

Yuki Tsunoda revealed the team has found the cause behind their recent slump but suggested it would be unlikely to see a quick turnaround for Silverstone.

The Japanese driver was on a run of three points scores in four races heading into Barcelona but upgrades made to the car have seen him stall, finishing out of the top 10 both in Spain and in Austria.

Yuki Tsunoda details RB changes after upgrade slump

Despite the troubles, not helped by the quick turnaround for the triple header, Tsunoda revealed to PlanetF1.com that the team had discovered what could be the cause of the teething problems with the latest upgrades.

“So upgrades in Barcelona were to focus on basically load,” he exclusively told PlanetF1.com. “Knowing that there might be a bit of consequences in terms of how comfortable you can drive through the corners.

“And Barcelona was not the race that we wanted and we felt at the same time we didn’t know the reason because we had a pretty good confidence and in the end it was nowhere.

“So after Austria, we collected the data across the cars and we found a couple of things that we didn’t expect.

“For me it was actually good learning for the future, because we can’t forget that we’re a new team and sometimes these kinds of upgrades, unexpected things actually help us to learn far more that we didn’t even think of.

“That actually, for me, was a good challenge and good to get through the good situation we faced earlier this season, to develop further, with even better, more quality features.

“In the end we concluded going into this grand prix, it was more like a hybrid between the old package and the new package.

“So it’s not like a complete failure, but just didn’t work as we planned.”

As for their hopes for this weekend, Tsunoda said the problems they unearthed were not easily fixed.

“It’s not a thing we can fix straight away because it’s not just coming from our package.

More from Silverstone

Lando Norris claims Max Verstappen took ‘easy’ way out in Austria, blasts ‘pretty stupid’ F1 rule

Fernando Alonso bemoans F1 ‘mistaking racing mistakes for dangerous driving’

“So basically, to improve our package or to increase performance, we need new parts which are normally recorded as an upgrade.

“I think we are already being super aggressive, compared to other competitors. Other competitors, barely bringing some upgrades, twice, probably most people three times, in the first half of the season. We probably [bring something] almost every race which I think tells already how much we appreciate the season so far.

“But I think purely, we shouldn’t be super rushed because like we saw at a couple of races that this package is working and just need a bit more time to increase or add a bit of more performance on top of it.”

Read next: British Grand Prix penalty set to be confirmed with driver braced for ’20-place’ grid drop