Ricciardo’s ex-coach feared sack after hitting Tsunoda in eye with golf ball

The Australian is working alongside Tsunoda this season in an arrangement that came well before Ricciardo sealed a shock return to the F1 grid with AlphaTauri. 

Italiano has revealed he was worried about losing his job almost immediately after a golf ball accident left him sweating on Tsunoda’s wellbeing just hours before the first race weekend of the campaign in Bahrain. 

Speaking on the Pitstop Podcast, Italiano explained the incident: "This was the first time I actually thought I may lose my job, I felt fairly safe until this moment!

"Pre-season went well, did testing in Italy, everything was looking really good, Yuki was super fit. We've come into Bahrain first race... Friday came around, I've texted him, was like, 'Cool. Let's do our mobility session’.

"We've gone out and rolled the mats out and essentially I have a golf ball, and we use the golf ball to roll out the ball of our feet and just loosen up our feet. So he's rolling his feet and I've got the foam roller so I'm rolling out my back. And then what he's done is he's grabbed the golf ball, and he's just lobbed it onto my shin.

"Obviously, it hurt. He's giggling because you know, good thing about me and Yuki, we banter each other quite a lot. So I let him go. And then he starts, he took the foam roller and start rolling his back. So I grabbed the golf ball, and then as I was walking to get the spiky ball, I just threw the golf ball.

"I wasn't even looking, and I just thought, I'll just lob it and it'll probably get him in the shin or something. I've lobbed it and he's rolling on his back. And it has hit him straight in the eye. Like, right eye. And I even heard the pop, he hit it clean. Golf balls are hard and it was a fair, decent lob.

"He was rolling in pain, holding on to his eye. I panicked, so I ran to get some ice, came back with some ice. And I was like, 'Dude, just put this on your face. I'm so sorry'. To be honest. I was waiting for him just to absolutely tear me apart. To his point, I think he was just in so much pain, he just didn't. I've never apologised so much in my life.”

Thankfully for Italiano, Tsunoda was fine and the Japanese driver went on to have a solid weekend, finishing 11th in the season opener. 

Italiano added: “I've run straight to the doctor. I'm like, 'We need eye drops, this is what I've done'. And the doctor is like, 'You idiot. I've gone to the mechanics [and said], 'Don't say anything to Yuki about his eye'. Literally the first person that walks into our race room, I haven't told the marketing team, literally the marketing team walked in, 'Oh my god, what happened to your eye?’

"And Yuki, I could tell he was frustrated like, 'What have you done to me?' Thankfully, he was okay. We used some eyedrops. His eye was hurting for about 10 days after, unfortunately, so we did have to keep a close eye on it.

"But hey, I didn't lose my job, and the rest is history. We actually had a pretty good race one actually. So yeah, I think we finished P11. Thankfully, because I was like if we have a bad race, I'm definitely getting the blame here, like 100%. But yeah, just a freak accident where I've literally hurt my driver before a race weekend, which is not ideal."