Yuki Tsunoda has suggested his lack of experience with Red Bull machinery has resulted in his challenging run of form with the team.
Tsunoda was called up after just two rounds into the campaign to replace a struggling Liam Lawson.
The Japanese driver sealed a best result of ninth in Bahrain but has struggled to extract pace from the RB21 compared to team-mate Max Verstappen, who has won twice so far this year.
Red Bull's car is known to be particularly tricky to handle, with a narrow operating window proving a challenge for many of Verstappen's team-mates.
Tsunoda is confident he can make steps forward as he partakes in more race events with the Milton Keynes-based squad.
“I'm still building progress in terms of confidence and everything,” Tsunoda told media including RacingNews365.
“The understanding about the car is still getting there, the last few tenths of a second.
“Especially with track evolution, you want to naturally feel it . When you change the set-up, you want to know what kind of balance you're going to get.
“With a new car, it's hard to know exactly how the car is going to behave. Those things [come down] to experience.
“Obviously, the last four years with VCARB, I know exactly what's going to happen, so I don't really have to think about those things. I would naturally react and drive fast. Those things will come.
Tsunoda admitted he didn't prepare himself enough for how valuable Red Bull experience would be in order to produce competitive pace.
“I think Imola [where he crashed heavily in qualifying] just made me recognise the amount of understanding currently I have,” he added.
“I probably underestimated how much importance [there is] to know those things, those areas.
“It's not that I lost confidence or whatever, but I'm just slowly building up and we'll be there at some point.”
Also interesting:
Join RacingNews365's Ian Parkes, Sam Coop and Nick Golding, as they discuss last weekend's Spanish Grand Prix! Max Verstappen's clash with George Russell is a major talking point this week, as is whether Lewis Hamilton has started to contemplate if he is still quick enough.
Rather watch the podcast? Then click here!
Most read
In this article
Join the conversation!
Robson Coimbra
At the time of Honda's almost absolute dominance in MotoGP, with Marc Marques, from 2014 to 2019, the 2nd rider of the Honda team could not keep up with the pace of Marc Marques, even when Marques was out due to injuries or recovery from serious operations, the replacements could not ride the Honda RC213V bike, there is an identical parallel between the two champions, Marc and Max. Honda's period without the Spanish rider was complicated, no one bores the bike, great champions were hired, but none managed to make the bike go on the edge of the knife. I'm afraid Red Bull is on the same path, a bolide in the exact measurements of its golden driver. It is not suitable for any other, only he is like that, the measurements are exclusive.