Tsunoda questions whether his AlphaTauri F1 car is identical to Gasly's

Tsunoda could only manage 16th at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, as he was beaten in qualifying by teammate Pierre Gasly for the fourth race in succession.

The Japanese rookie was frustrated over team radio, saying to his engineer: "I can’t f---ing believe this car."

After the session, Tsunoda appeared to suggest his car wasn’t identical to teammate Gasly’s.

“I don’t know,” Tsunoda said. “Well, like I said, it’s always different feedback compared to my team-mate. Even every time it's the opposite, so I have a little bit of a question mark if it’s the same car. Of course it’s the same car, but the character of the car is too different.

“Maybe of course it’s just the driving style, but I don’t know what’s happened and why I’m struggling this much.”

Tsunoda felt he had done everything right in the lead up to his final Q1 lap in terms of tyre preparation and the lap itself, leading to his confusion as to why he was unable to progress into Q2.

“No I was not pushing too hard on the out-lap, just did normal and the tyre temperature is quite spot on before the lap," Tsunoda added. “I just feel from my side like the other car is really slow compared to my car, especially the out-lap.

“I don’t know why they’re slow, I think most of the cars are slower than me. But my team, we set up the tyre to be faster, I don’t know … it’s not the place I want to fight. The performance in this car is easy to get through to Q2 but I really struggled to even get through to Q2."