Japanese F1 driver Yuki Tsunoda has raced for the Red Bull junior team for four seasons now, and has travelled to the U.S. for work at least eight times. For reasons that still aren’t completely clear, the 24-year-old driver was detained for several hours when he flew to Las Vegas for the Grand Prix weekend. Immigration officials apparently did not believe that Tsunoda was who he claimed to be, despite the entire city being more or less shut down for the race weekend famously happening on the strip that very weekend. Despite having the correct paperwork for entry into the country, the young driver was forced to sit alone in a room and threatened with being sent back to Japan.
“Luckily they let me in after a couple of discussions, well, a lot of discussions,” Tsunoda said of the incident.
“I didn’t get sent back home. I had the visas and everything, and it’s been the same I guess the last three tracks, so yeah it felt a bit strange that I got stopped and had proper discussions—luckily it didn’t go on for more than two or three hours.”
Tsunoda believes he may have been singled out for additional screening because “I didn’t look like a Formula One driver.” It seems Yuki likes to travel in much the same way I do, comfortably. “I was wearing, like, pajamas,” he explained. “There was my physio I travel with, obviously when you have questions and go to customs you go individually right,” Tsunoda continued. “He put me in the room and we had a conversation even, like, can I bring the person that I travel with and maybe he can help a little bit to explain a bit more about myself and the situation in Formula 1?
“But they didn’t allow me to bring that friend or even call anything, to the team or Formula 1 that can help me, but in that room you can’t do anything.”
There’s no way Red Bull would have sent Yuki to an airport he didn’t have proper paperwork for, and nobody else in the team seemed to have an issue. Given that he’s got a passport with dozens of stamps in it, travels with an entourage, more than likely flew first class, and has luggage full of team gear, it seems like any question immigration might have had about Tsunoda could have been answered in 20 seconds. We live in an era of facial recognition software and very few people are photographed as often as Formula 1 drivers.
By Jalopnik
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