Tsunoda hails "productive" AlphaTauri start to new F1 era

Yuki Tsunoda has hailed a "really productive" start for AlphaTauri on day one of pre-season testing in Barcelona.

The Japanese driver struggled in his first season in F1 last year but started strongly on his first official outing in the AT03, logging 121 laps and finishing seventh quickest.

AlphaTauri did run a private shakedown at Misano ahead of the three-day test at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya but will be buoyed by the convincing mileage achieved on the first day of the test, with only Max Verstappen completing more laps.

Tsunoda gives way to Pierre Gasly on day two but regarding his own running, he said: “It’s been a really productive day and a good start to testing for the team.

"This is the first proper outing in the 2022 car, so everything we’ve done has been super important for our learnings, as obviously, this car is completely different to last year.

"Mileage, and also the changes we were making to the set-up, were key today and we managed to achieve everything we wanted to.

"We found a few things that we still need to play with but we’re happy with how things are going so far.

"The car has been really reliable today, we needed to get as much data as possible and we’ve managed to do this.

"We’ve still got five more days of testing to go before the first race. I think currently the car looks quite fast, but we won’t know the true performance of the car until Bahrain qualifying.”

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