09/10/2022
NEWS STORY
Yuki Tsunoda: "It's been a difficult afternoon. I obviously wanted to finish in the points, so it's a real shame that I wasn't able to make it today. I think that I did the best I could today and extracted the most from the car, but the pace just wasn't there. The whole weekend here has been so exciting still, I've really enjoyed my first experience of driving an F1 car round my home track and I want to say a huge thank you to all the fans that have come out to support both myself and the team, especially in these rainy conditions today. Also, big congrats to Max for winning the World Championship - it's great that the Japanese fans have been able to witness that here today!"
Pierre Gasly: "We wanted to try something different today, however it's very difficult to overtake on this track and we tried our best, but at the end it didn't really work out for us. It's a shame as it's a special race weekend for us and Honda, but at the same time it's great that Max has been able to win the Championship. He has been incredible, winning consistently, and has always been performing at his best and has got everything to be World Champion, so a massive congrats to him, to Red Bull and to Honda. It's extra special to win the title here in Suzuka, so I'm really happy for them."
Guillaume Dezoteux (Head of Vehicle Performance): "It's been a difficult Sunday for us, and we didn't manage to get points today in Suzuka. Starting from the pitlane, Pierre was able to catch the pack immediately, but got hit by a panel that was broken during the crash of Carlos. This broke his front wing and front wheel winglet, however we were able to repair this during the red flag period. At the restart visibility was very bad, but the track grip was good enough to get on Inters straight away and gain on the cars that stayed on Wets. The degradation increased fast, and we decided to stop again, which unfortunately wasn't enough to pass the group of cars in front of Pierre. With regards to Yuki's race, it started pretty well by gaining positions before the red flag. Then, he lost a bit of time behind Norris on his first stint. We decided to also stop him for a second set of Inters to attack the group of cars held by Latifi. Yuki did a number of nice overtakes and made his way through the field, but it wasn't enough to get to the points today sadly. While we hope for better in the next races, I would like to congratulate Max for this amazing second World title."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Suzuka here.