Forget setup sheets and tyre degradation graphs for a second. The most honest line to come out of Monza practice belongs to Yuki Tsunoda, who admitted he spent part of Friday simply forgetting to press a button. Not a metaphor. An actual, literal button, and it cost him lap time every time he forgot it.
The Racing Bulls stand-in was quietly one of the stories of the day at the Italian Grand Prix, and not because of any drama. He was tenth after Friday practice, splitting Max Verstappen and finishing within a tenth of teammate Arvid Lindblad. That is a strong return to a car he only rejoined a fortnight ago, and it follows a promising weekend at Zandvoort. Monza was supposed to be the harder test. Tsunoda said as much himself during media day, warning that the 2026-spec Temple of Speed is what he called energy-starved, meaning energy management would matter far more here than it did in the Netherlands.
A Confession, Not a Complaint
So did the difficulty match the billing? Sort of, but not in the way anyone expected. Speaking to Motorsport.com in the media pen, Tsunoda didn’t blame the car, the team, or the tyres. He blamed his own memory.
“Yes and no. It’s definitely a struggle, especially FP1, but it was more coming from, like in general, a lot of things that were pretty messy.” – Yuki Tsunoda
The messiness, as it turns out, has nothing to do with Racing Bulls specifically and everything to do with how convoluted the 2026 rulebook has made a simple concept like reducing drag on a straight. Tsunoda knows Monza from the ground-effect era, when a single DRS zone did the job. This year, DRS is gone, replaced by active aerodynamics and what F1 calls Straight Mode, or SM for short. Monza alone has four SM zones this season, considerably more activation points than the old DRS era ever required, and they matter because without them the drag levels on these cars would make the on-track spectacle even worse than it already threatens to be.
Old habits, it seems, do not update themselves automatically. Tsunoda kept forgetting to activate SM on the approach to Parabolica, a lapse he can laugh about now but one that quietly bled away lap time all session.
“We have more activation points than last year with the equivalent of DRS. And I just keep forgetting using this SM towards Turn 11. I was like, oh, why am I losing so much lap time? Oh, well, actually, I’m not using SM. So those things are just really hitting me quite hard and, you know, there are some challenges that I had with the transition between last year and this year.” – Yuki Tsunoda
There is something almost reassuring about that admission. Formula 1 spends most of its time selling the idea that these drivers are flawless supercomputers strapped into carbon tubs. Then one of them casually reveals he spent a session forgetting to press a switch, like a commuter who cannot remember whether they locked the front door. It’s the kind of detail that never makes it into a team press release, and it tells you more about how genuinely disorientating the 2026 regulation reset has been than any amount of technical jargon from an engineer.
Sorting Himself Out by FP2
Whatever mental note Tsunoda made between sessions clearly worked. By FP2 he was using SM everywhere he was allowed to, and the lap times followed.
“Overall, in FP2, it all came a bit more together. It ended up pretty nicely, also knowing what kind of things we can still improve. I think Arvid is looking more comfortable in the car, so there’s still some things for me [to improve]. The confidence in the car is not massive, not 100% there, so gradually I just need to pick up more performance from that.” – Yuki Tsunoda
That is a refreshingly unvarnished self-assessment. No false modesty, no inflated confidence, just a driver openly admitting his teammate currently looks more at home in the car than he does, while still banking a result that split Verstappen and Lindblad by tenths. Whether that gap closes or widens once qualifying is done is the more interesting question, but for a driver two race weekends into a fresh seat, being this competitive this quickly says plenty about his adaptability.
The Car Behind the Numbers
It also says something about the machinery underneath him. Tsunoda was blunt about the contrast with what he drove in 2025, describing the VCARB 03 as considerably less peaky than the car he was used to.
“It’s too early stages to say because it’s only the second race and I don’t know how exactly it compares to other cars, but I certainly got a lot of support from the team and also [this car is] less peaky I guess compared to what I experienced last year.” – Yuki Tsunoda
A car that lets a driver jump in after a spell away and immediately be within a tenth of his teammate is not a car with a narrow, unforgiving setup window. That is worth remembering next time someone tries to sell you the idea that raw pace alone separates the front of the grid from the back. A user-friendly car that does not punish a driver for small errors is arguably as valuable as outright downforce, particularly on a weekend as unforgiving on strategy as this one.
Bracing for Slipstream Chaos
If Friday was about relearning old habits, Saturday’s qualifying at Monza is shaping up to be about something Tsunoda already understands perfectly: the tow. Despite the wholesale changes under the bodywork, the slipstream remains the one constant at this circuit, and Tsunoda expects it to turn qualifying into a genuine mess.
“I think it will be chaos, Q1, Q2 and probably Q3 as well. But I guess that’s the usual story in Monza, probably a little bit more extreme in this year. We need a good strategy for that, but those things are really hard to predict. But yeah, the tow is definitely important and that also affects everything. It’s going to be spicy.” – Yuki Tsunoda
Qualifying gets underway at 14:00 UTC on Saturday, check the calendar for your local time, and if Tsunoda’s prediction holds, expect queues of cars jostling for a tow right up until the moment the chequered flag falls on Q3. Mercedes has already been open about the tow tactics it plans to deploy with its own drivers, and Red Bull is reportedly weighing similar tricks, so Tsunoda will hardly be alone in treating the slipstream as a weapon rather than a happy accident.
Why This Actually Matters
None of this changes the championship picture. Tsunoda sits without a point this season, well adrift of teammate Lindblad, and Monza was never going to be the race that rewrites his year. But a driver openly admitting he forgot to use a piece of new technology, then fixing it within a session and matching his more experienced teammate, tells you something useful about how steep the 2026 learning curve still is for everyone on the grid, not just at the back. If a driver with Monza history this deep can lose lap time to a forgotten button, spare a thought for whoever is still fumbling through it by Sunday afternoon.
