Tost hails "super talent" Tsunoda after 'most complete' F1 weekend

Tsunoda secured his best qualifying result to date in Baku with seventh, ultimately moving up one spot thanks to Lando Norris’ grid penalty.

The Japanese rookie finished the race in seventh to mark his best result of the season, even though he lost out to Norris and Fernando Alonso in the closing two laps.

“Yuki did a fantastic job I must say,” Tost said. “Okay he had the small incident [in qualifying] but it was in qualifying three and it can happen – it happened to more experienced drivers. And then his race pace sometimes was unbelievable. I was really worried that something was going to happen because he was really fast.

“He’s on a very good way and I think that he will come up with some good results in the second half of the season where he gets a little bit more experience, especially on racetracks that he knows.

“We must not forget that it was his first time in Baku. Of course in Bahrain, he scored two points when he finished ninth but he knew the track quite well from Formula 2, we tested there and we could find a good setup. But we came here to Baku and he didn’t know the track and he immediately got quite familiar with it and started from seventh place and finished seventh.

“For me it was a really fantastic job from his side, a fantastic performance. We have to work on some things – we know this – but I am confident that we will get everything together because he is a super talent.”

Even though he enjoyed his best weekend in F1, Tsunoda wasn’t happy that he lost two positions at the end of the race.

“Until the red flag it was quite good, but after the restart, the start was okay but the track positioning was all wrong – I tried my best and I went aggressive but I couldn’t avoid dropping two places to be honest,'' Tsunoda added. “I don’t know how to avoid it. But congratulations to my teammate who got a P3 and a podium.

“Overall if I take all the positives from the race weekend, definitely there were positives, but I’m really mad at the last lap.”