Horner Sees Similarity Between Verstappen and Tsunoda in the RB21

Team principal Christian Horner sees a notable similarity between Yuki Tsunoda and Max Verstappen within the Red Bull Racing team.

"I think he's just finding his feet. I thought that he drove a pretty decent weekend in Bahrain, and scoring his first points, qualifying in the top ten, and he's building on that here. The car for him, he said, 'look, it's not doing anything particularly nasty'."

"A lot of his comments are similar-ish to Max in terms of where he wants to find [the] speed from the car on sort of turning to [the] apex," Horner said to Sky Sports after the first free practice in Saudi Arabia.

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FP2 crash in Saudi Arabia

During the second free practice of the race weekend, ten minutes before the end of the session, the Japanese driver crashed his RB21 into the wall, whilst on a long run on soft tires at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit. "I just turned in too much and clipped the wall on the inside. Just had damage and after that I just had no control. Apologies to the team. The pace was looking good, but it’s a shame," Tsunoda said afterwards.

The Red Bull mechanics had to do a considerable amount of work to repair the car. Helmut Marko, Red Bull advisor, said he did not expect Tsunoda to crash. "I would say the crash would be more expected in the qualifying lap, not in the long run," he told, among others, GPblog.