The Qatar Grand Prix had its fair share of drama, but Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda unintentionally stole the show with a hilarious miscommunication over team radio that left him questioning the presence of a beaver on track.
The incident began when Alex Albon’s Williams shed a loose wing mirror on Lap 30, which was subsequently struck by Valtteri Bottas’s Sauber, scattering debris and forcing a Safety Car deployment. Amid the chaos, Tsunoda misheard his engineers’ warning about the debris, leading to a moment of pure comedic gold.
“Beaver in the Middle East?!”
Tsunoda revealed after the race that he thought his team had reported a beaver causing the disruption:
“Was it a mirror? I heard beaver,” Tsunoda said, struggling to hold back laughter. “My engineers said, ‘There’s a beaver.’ But why is there a beaver in the Middle East? Like how is it possible a beaver is in the Middle East?”
The Japanese driver even joked about how climate change might explain such an anomaly:
“Maybe there’s a surprise with global warming – kicking a lot of interesting things in the Earth.”
Once the confusion was cleared, Tsunoda refocused on the race, but not without raising another concern related to the incident.
“Unfair Advantage?” Tsunoda Calls for Review
The wing mirror incident prompted a wave of double yellow flags, leading to controversy when some drivers—most notably Lando Norris—failed to slow appropriately. Norris received a harsh 10-second stop-and-go penalty, but Tsunoda alleged that others also disregarded the yellow flags.
“There was the double yellow, and some cars behind didn’t really follow it,” Tsunoda explained. “We have to revise that in the next drivers’ briefing because some drivers respect it, and some don’t. That’s very unfair.”
A Tough Outing for Tsunoda
While Tsunoda’s radio mishap added levity, his race result was no laughing matter. Despite starting strong and briefly running in ninth place after overtaking Fernando Alonso, his RB struggled for pace throughout the race.
“I had a good start as well and I was P9, able to overtake [Fernando] Alonso after the Safety Car,” he said. “But I never had like that much of a bad pace. I just gave it everything—I wasn’t even managing the tyres.”
Unfortunately, his efforts weren’t enough as he slipped down to finish 13th, a blow to RB’s fight for sixth in the Constructors’ Championship.
RB’s Uphill Battle
With Tsunoda finishing 13th and teammate Liam Lawson in 14th, RB walked away from Qatar without points. The team remains eighth in the Constructors’ standings with 46 points, trailing Haas by eight and Alpine by 13 as the season heads to its finale in Abu Dhabi.
Despite the frustrations, Tsunoda’s comedic “beaver” mix-up has provided a rare lighthearted moment in a high-stakes season—and perhaps a reminder that even in the world of Formula 1, humor can find its way onto the track.
