Tsunoda explains the significant difference with Verstappen partly because he isn't driving with the full update package. "I have never used the full new package, not even in Imola. It was a little different. I'm not sure about the assignment of components, but I don't think I'm going to get the complete version," Tsunoda says to, amongst others, GPblog. Even in Monaco, the Japanese driver will thus not be racing with the newest specification.

Moreover, he states that Verstappen simply knows much better how the Red Bull behaves. "In Imola, we changed the setup between FP2 and FP3. In FP2, we were quite close together. But he knows the car, I don't. He and the engineers could extract more from it. My setup just didn't work. He felt good already in turn 2, where I was a bit too enthusiastic", he says about his crash on the Italian track.

He calls the crash in Q1 the result of a lack of understanding. He explains: "Such a crash wouldn't have happened if I had better understood the car. I haven't experienced something like this since 2022. It was because I didn't know how the car would react to the setup. The setup I tried was totally new and I think the Red Bull changes more than I had expected."