Ricciardo's arrival put pressure on Tsunoda: 'That made me make mistakes'

In the Belgian Grand Prix, all eyes were once again on Ricciardo, while it was the Japanese who returned home with a point. Tsunoda understands that most of the talk was about his teammate. "Obviously it's hard, quite hard and challenging, but at the same time I know that this current situation is completely new for me, and I'm learning a lot, especially the challenge by an experienced driver, and that experienced driver is not like a normal experienced driver, he's just a top driver, and we know that he's fast, and I already know that he's fast, but also how he's behaving in the team is probably much opposite as me, so there's a lot of things to learn from him."

Tsunoda was somewhat rushed

Tsunoda says the arrival of Ricciardo put extra pressure on him. "It's also a bit of pressure for myself and probably that kind of makes a rushy feeling and caused a couple of mistakes in the last couple of races. But yeah, to put it all together in the last race was not easy, but yeah, just happy and feeling ready for a fight within the second half of the season.," the Japanese told GPblog and others.

There is no denying that Tsunoda is having a strong season. Compared to last season, the AlphaTauri driver has clearly made strides: "Yes, consistency was key, and especially last year so able to improve. As the beginning of the race I was happy, I knew why, and I was slightly happy in the comfort zone, and I was kind of in the rhythm, and after Barcelona, there were two races where I lost points in an unfortunate way, and since then, I started to kind of lost the rhythm. I recognised the amount of things I have to improve, and I still struggle a little, but in the end, in the last couple of races, I tried to maintain the consistency as much as possible, and especially today, it's been back to the same shape or similar shape I had in the beginning of the season. But I’m really happy and I just keep improving."