“When I work out, especially in the morning, it ruins my day.” Yuki Tsunoda opened up on the seventh episode of the new season of Drive to Survive about the fact that he doesn’t always enjoy physical preparation, admitting the contrast between the 21-year-old Japanese and his 66-year-old boss Franz Tost .
“I did not know that Franz runs ten kilometers from 5.30 in the morning, which I have never done in my life,” Tsunoda recently revealed, who also defined himself as a “big bum.”
“And last year, in the first half of the season, I was ordering food from Uber Eats every day, that wasn’t right.”
In fact, he wasn’t, or at least that’s the conclusion Red Bull Racing came to after a rocky start to the season in which Tsunoda only picked up two points from five races. Without going any further, the Austrian brand forced its protégé to move from Milton Keynes (United Kingdom) to Faenza (Italy), where the AlphaTauri factory is located, so that Tost could have him close and impose a stricter lifestyle on him.
The Austrian was not flattered by the pilot’s comments and defended him, assuring that it was simply a matter of perfecting a situation that was not optimal. “I think Yuki was a bit tongue-in-cheek in everything he said! As I mentioned before, if a young driver comes into Formula 1, he is completely surprised by the forces he is up against. slow, with forces that pull the neck to the left or to the right, etc. But Yuki was already in good form last year, otherwise he wouldn’t have managed to finish ninth in Bahrain.”
“However, he realized – like all the other drivers – that he had to do more physical training. So it’s important to be in the car, because the best training is done in the car. , once you’ve done a race, you can feel where it hurts; then you can talk to the coach, the physio, to know how to modify the physical preparation to strengthen the muscles that have suffered “.
Yuki Tsunoda and Franz Tost in F1 first test
“As for Yuki, he came to Faenza, his coach was with him and he had to train twice a day, in the morning and in the afternoon, until he felt very well. Thanks to the training, his physical condition improved. So I think Yuki is in very good shape this year. But again, he wasn’t too bad last year, it’s something new for F1 rookies, you can ask others.”
Although he imposes a strict daily schedule on Tsunoda, the director of AlphaTauri prefers not to be directly involved in his physical preparation and leaves that up to his coach, so they do not go running together at dawn.
“My morning run? Yuki doesn’t get up at five to run with me!” laughs Tost. “I don’t run with him. First of all, running is not his favorite discipline, as his legs are a bit shorter. And it’s not important that he comes running with me at five in the morning. He has his coach, with whom I’ve talked a lot.”
“In addition, each Formula 1 driver also has to do a test at Red Bull in the fitness center, where weak points are discovered, and those results are important, they are the basis for further improvement in physical aspect, because each athlete Every pilot is different. They are not all the same. Therefore, a special and individual training program is needed, and I did not train with Yuki.”
In any case, Tsunoda will try to turn a corner this season, after finishing his first year in Formula 1 with 32 points, far from the 110 achieved by his teammate Pierre Gasly.
