The Red Bull racer flipped his car at the Tamburello chicane during Q1 on his first soft tyre run.
Fortunately, Tsunoda landed the right way up but left his team with a sizeable overnight repair for the grand prix.
“I’m OK, thankfully. But at the same time, it’s very frustrating how I ended up [there] in such an early stage, and especially a very unnecessary situation,” said Tsunoda after the crash.
The crash came after a lacklustre third practice where the Japanese driver was only 17th.
The 25-year-old lamented his slump due to “zero grip” that put him 1.2 seconds off the pace.
His teammate Max Verstappen was third in FP3 and went on to qualify second behind McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and ahead of Mercedes lead George Russell.
Although his results have been solid if unspectacular, Tsunoda has seemingly continued an ugly trend of drivers struggling to tame the wild RB21.
“It’s quite up and down,” he said of the car.
“In some sessions I felt OK, in some sessions suddenly I dropped a lot.
“In FP3… to be honest, it was a big mystery how I ended up.
“Obviously I was not able to put it all together, but at the same time it was pretty poor pace.
“We didn’t know exactly why, but we made a lot of changes and it felt pretty good in the first turn, Turn 2 and Turn 3, and I crashed immediately after.
“It’s just a shame. I feel like the car was quite there and I just put myself into the wall with such a stupid mistake.”
“I’m okay, thankfully”
Yuki Tsunoda reflects on his big Q1 crash #F1 #ImolaGP pic.twitter.com/iLzV5puu7U
— Formula 1 (@F1) May 17, 2025
The Formula 1 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix gets underway at 11pm AEST.
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