Yuki Tsunoda has spoken of the benefit he has felt from working alongside Daniel Ricciardo's former trainer. Tsunoda – who is now into his third season in F1 with AlphaTauri – has started to work with Michael Italiano, who previously acted as Ricciardo's performance coach. While Ricciardo is no longer on the grid, Tsunoda feels that the experience that Italiano gained with the Australian is now proving beneficial to him. "It's good that he has good experience in Formula 1, with Daniel since 2018," the Japanese driver told the F1 Nation podcast. "I have [learned] from him [about] what Daniel was doing, and how he was acting outside racing, inside racing, and that helps me as well. "[The] relationship with him, we get along so well, actually, [which] I didn't expect. "So it's just good, [we're] always having fun [and having a] laugh. Actually also [that was the case with my] previous trainer as well, but it's a different kind of laugh. It's just good."
Tsunoda happy with Bahrain performance
In terms of on-track action, Tsunoda finished the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix outside of the points in P11 after being beaten to P10 by Alex Albon. Despite this, the 22-year-old feels generally satisfied with many aspects of his performance over the weekend. "I'm happy with my performance itself, since Free Practice, consistently able to drive quite good," Tsunoda explained. "[It was] really, really close at the end of the lap, close with the points. "I'm good friends with Alex as well, but after I crossed the finish line, I literally wanted to overtake like crazy, because he always pulled away on the main straight, which is the main difference between AlphaTauri and Williams. "But I think, in the end, he did a very good job, so it was really fun actually to drive together with him. But [it was] really close and so frustrating."
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