Miami Grand Prix starting grid changed for sprint race as F1 star sent to the back

will start the from the pit lane after making set-up changes to his RB21 machine under parc ferme conditions. The Japanese racer was due to line up 18th on the grid. Red Bull and Tsunoda were both feeling optimistic about the 24-year-old's chances heading into the Miami race weekend, but things came undone in the sprint shootout as he was eliminated in SQ1.

This essentially turned Saturday's sprint race into an additional test session for the driver of the No.22 car, with the attention turned to later in the day. This will be good news for Gabriel Bortoleto and Oliver Bearman, who have both climbed a place on the grid as a result of Tsunoda's pit lane start. The two rookies will launch from behind Jack Doohan, who was following an error on Friday.

"Oh, some intelligent car just came out from the pits and I [had to] abort my lap," Tsunoda revealed when asked to explain his SQ1 exit on Friday. "A lot of cars cost my lap quite a lot.

"To be honest, that's it. Last corner, obviously, I had quite a lock-up, but anyway, the lap was pretty gone already from Turn One, because of the car at pit exit. Just wasn't able to do a proper lap at all, so yeah, that's it."

Tsunoda's start to life at Red Bull has been an intriguing case. The Kanagawa-born star has shown glimpses of impressive pace and has often been close to Max Verstappen throughout free practice sessions, only for the pace gap to widen in qualifying.

This will not be surprising news to fans who have followed the sport over the past five years. Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Sergio Perez and Liam Lawson all failed to hold a candle to Verstappen's performances, with the four-time world champion able to extract immense speed from often ill-handling machinery.

"It just needs more time, I guess, to get used to it fully," he explained. "I'm happy with the progress so far. The confidence is quite there, but just when you push 100 per cent on the limit in qualifying, that's where you kind of face it for the first time, right? Because you don't push 100 per cent until then.

"The starting point is always slightly below where I want to be or where I used to start with in FP1, so it takes a bit more time to build up on new tracks. In qualifying, most of the time so far, I experience new behaviour from the car, and I'm not always able to cope with it. I wouldn't say the car is super difficult - it just needs more time to define where the limit is."