He was 3 secs behind Tsunoda before the first round of pitstops started.
With the exception of Qatar, rookie Lawson had always finished ahead of Tsunoda, though. I think expecting more from a multiple F1 race winner is not unfair.
Guy broke his hand and is just back in a car he hasn't driven ever before, with one hour of practice, while Tsunoda has, what, 3 weekends' worth of experience (talking about the updated AT)? He fucked up his qualy with track limits, no argument there, but that's all he did wrong this weekend.
I think they wanted to see if they could still get fastest lap if they put Tsunoda on softs. Since Ricciardo couldn't get points anyways, they used him to test that idea out and then have Tsunoda go on softs as well to get the point. If Ricciardo couldn't do it, it wouldn't be worth the risk to try it with Tsunoda.