Formula 1 managing director Ross Brawn has labelled AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda as the best rookie the sport has had for several 🐲years.

Tsunoda impressed on his Fꦚ1 debut for AlphaTauri, finishing ninth.

On route to ninth place, the 20-year-ol🎀d pulled off some impressive overtaking manoeuvers, includi💧ng one on two-time F1 champion Fernando Alonso.

Tsunoda showed glimpses of his impressive pace during qualifying, where he ended🎉 Q1 second fastest overall.

Speaking in his post-race F1 column, Brawn heaped 💖praise on the Japanese driver.

“I’m really impressed with Yuki Tsunoda,” Brawn saℱid. “I met him at the weekend for the first time and he’s a really impress❀ive character. He is quite amusing and his language in the car can be a bit fruity!

“He showed some brilliant spells in the race, which is encouraging considering it was his first F1 race. He is the best rookie F1 has had for years, having been fairly stunning in whatever series he h🍒as competed in.

“His promotion by Red Bull looks like a brilliant move. We can all remember the glorious days of full grandstands at Suzuka and the passion of 💙the Japanese fans. I think we are going to have that again, which is incredibly exciting.”

Reflecting on his first F1 race in Bahrain, Tsunoda admitted he was too cautious 🐲at the start but was happy with his recovery to ninth.

“First of all, I’ve got to say I’m really happy to score points for the team, it’s a shame for Pierre that he got a bit of a pr🅘oblem in his car. I’m really pleased to score points, also the๊ first time for a Japanese driver in a long time, so I’m really proud of that. 

“I was a bit disappointed with my first lap, I was too cautious to make sure I would get any damage on my car and ended up losing quite a lot of positions. I had to recover a lot of positions from there and that took me a lot of time and tyre life, so it was not a 100 percent performanc✅e. But I must say I’m really happy for the first points and also a lot of positive learnings for the future.”