The Austrian Grand Prix was Yuki Tsunoda's worst Formula 1 race yet for Red Bull. "Horrible," said team boss Christian Horner. And without obvious cause, it left Tsunoda completely baffled.
After finishing a twice-lapped 16th, and last of the finishers, Tsunoda was quick to identify the symptoms of a shocking low point in his Red Bull Racing career: tyres that degraded so badly they felt like they were "melting", and a "massive" pace deficit to "the level I have to be" at.
Tsunoda had no answers for the cause, though. It is possible he picked up a little more underlying damage in his skirmish with Lance Stroll and clattering of Franco Colapinto than could be fixed by a change of front wing after the second incident. But neither Tsunoda nor Red Bull thought so.
Tsunoda never really hides his true feelings, least of all post-race when the emotion of a disappointing afternoon is still quite high, but he was so confused after the Red Bull Ring race that his mixed zone appearance with media including The Race was more of an attempted real-time analysis/deconstruction of what went wrong - but without any firm conclusion.
"It's not like the car is bad, especially the first few laps it feels amazing," said Tsunoda.
"But the thing is, I feel like the car is chewing the [tyres], or the tyre is just melting, lap by lap, corner by corner.
"Whatever I do, it's melting every lap and feeling less grip lap by lap.
"In that situation, it's really hard to obviously maintain the pace. I'm trying multiple stuff, this grand prix. It's not working really."
There is a caveat to Tsunoda's race that it was so bad it’s hard to find any meaningful comparisons within it.
His race ironically started to fall apart at the same time team-mate Max Verstappen's ended. Having gained a couple of places with a good start and Turn 1, Tsunoda lost one position reacting to the melee caused when Verstappen was wiped out of the grand prix by Kimi Antonelli at the top of the hill.
Then Tsunoda was guilty of weak positioning down to Turn 3, leaving himself vulnerable on the outside of a three-wide battle - and then, quite poorly, he drifted wide at Turn 6 which let Esteban Ocon steal a place just before the safety car was deployed.
But so poor was Tsunoda's pace that this probably didn't matter. He took the restart between Ocon's Haas and Nico Hulkenberg's Sauber - two cars that went on to the finish in the points, two cars that a Red Bull should be beating comfortably, and two cars that Tsunoda was simply not as fast as in the first half of the race.
Dropping out of midfield contention with the Colapinto incident, the subsequent pitstop for a front wing change, and later a 10-second penalty, greatly exaggerated the end result. But what can be assessed is notably devoid of any positives.
"I was curious to see how Max was performing in this race, but I'm sure it won't be slow, as much as that [Tsunoda's performance]," he admitted.
"Maybe consistently, there is probably lap-by-lap, probably at least four tenths.
"It's hard to find, at least something big, that is causing this much of a difference."
That was either a rapid analysis from Tsunoda or something that had been quickly fed back to him before his media appearance, but it seemed about right.
He was undercut by Hulkenberg by several seconds around the first pitstops, and passed/pulled away from by Ocon on merit after very briefly getting ahead due to a slow Haas pitstop. Maybe the Red Bull is particularly weak in dirty air but, even so, you would expect better. And it did not improve much when Tsunoda was running on his own either.
When Tsunoda rejoined from the second pitstop with a new nose and front wing, he settled in between the leading McLarens and then the two Ferraris. A lap down, with fresh mediums versus hards that were a few laps old, Tsunoda was on average three quarters of a second a lap slower than both Oscar Piastri (21 laps) and Charles Leclerc (17 laps) until they stopped.
The fact he ended up on fresh mediums at a time others were eking out stints on the hards means all that can really be observed is the broader trend: Tsunoda was a lot slower than the frontrunners, unremarkable compared to those in the midfield, and with a decline in competitiveness as the stint went on. His middle stint is the static black line in the graph below, with Piastri, Leclerc and Lawson's showing their pace compared to hm.
For example, Liam Lawson's one-stopping Racing Bulls was on average four tenths a lap faster over 26 laps, despite Tsunoda initially being quicker after Lawson stopped for fresh hards when Tsunoda was just a couple of laps into his medium-tyre stint.
Credit to Tsunoda for not trying to hide this. He could have latched on, optimistically, to a few laps on mediums where his pace was unremarkably solid, or the car feeling better on low fuel and softs in a short final stint. Or even that, despite a Q1 elimination, he only seemed a couple of tenths slower than Verstappen on one-lap pace. But he didn't.
When asked by The Race if there'd been any warning of this on Friday's long runs, given his one-lap pace was reasonable, Tsunoda said: "The one-lap pace, I'm improving race by race, which is good. But when it comes to races, it's just always a different story.
"Literally, the tyre is not holding at all. I don't know; probably it's worse than others, but maybe I'm doing [something] wrong, I have to find the reasons.
"Just when it comes to races, it's just really hard, there's just no grip. It's positive that one-lap pace was OK this race. It's just I don't know what's going on with the race pace."
Given the extent of his struggles, it was surprising that Tsunoda seemed to run pretty much the entire grand prix with minimal proactive feedback from his engineer. That could be explained by poor-quality radio transmissions leaving Red Bull hesitant to interfere but Tsunoda clearly needed help and did not get a huge amount.
At the same time, it could also be argued that him waiting until 15 laps or so before the end of his race to ask if he was "doing something wrong" with his driving was leaving it far too late anyway.
Tsunoda feels he has Red Bull's full support, and the team is trying to be patient - something that is easier to do than with his predecessor Lawson partly because Tsunoda's one-lap pace is at least better, but Honda's backing also inevitably plays a part.
"Of course we'll look to see how we can support him, but there's a big delta between the two cars," said Horner.
"Internally we ask all of those questions that no doubt you ask in terms of why. Obviously the car has evolved over years in a specific direction.
"But we'll see if we can help Yuki and rebuild his confidence in Silverstone."
But there is little time to regroup before the British GP. And whether it was desperation, exasperation, or something else in that zone, Tsunoda's summary boiled down to not knowing what was going wrong and being acutely aware that has to change quickly to have any chance of ending his rotten run of form.
"I'm not sure [if] I'm doing [something] completely wrong to be honest, but the pace delta between the level I have to be in is massive," he said.
"I'm working hard to find the reasons. But even [when] we see the data, going through, just can't [find it] - even with the engineers, it's really hard to find, in terms of driving-style difference with Max.
"Maybe you have to find [them] from a different kind of view, but for now, it's just hard to find the reasons. But I have to find it anyway."
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