“They’ve not been good to me just lately,” lamented Yuki Tsunoda after the stewards handed him penalty factors for the third time in as many rounds at Silverstone.
He had a clear licence following the Spanish Grand Prix in the beginning of final month however has swiftly risen to 5 penalty factors. Whereas Tsunoda feels the stewards are abruptly being exhausting on him, an reverse case may simply be made: that they had been too lenient on him beforehand.
Carlos Sainz Jnr may effectively make that case. Tsunoda made contact with him twice within the area of 4 rounds.
In Bahrain, Sainz was within the means of overtaking Tsunoda across the exterior of the primary nook. Because the Williams went across the Purple Bull, Tsunoda oversteered into him, inflicting important harm to the FW47’s flooring which ruined Sainz’s race. The stewards took no motion.
Three races later at Imola, Sainz once more handed Tsunoda on the surface, this time heading into Tamburello. Once more Tsunoda made contact, albeit extra calmly, and Sainz was capable of hold going after passing him. “Once more this man touched me like in Bahrain,” the Williams driver remarked, because the stewards famous the incident however once more issued no penalty.
Remarkably, Tsunoda was concerned in one other related incident between these two races. Pierre Gasly got here out of flip three alongside Tsunoda and was barely forward of him on the surface as they become the following nook.
Gasly left Tsunoda as a lot room as doable however the Purple Bull driver ran huge into the Alpine and despatched it spinning right into a barrier, placing each drivers out. The stewards determined to deal with it as a “lap one incident” – and due to this fact deserved to be thought-about extra leniently – although they admitted “we thought-about whether or not this was correctly a lap one incident or actually an incident between two vehicles (and no others) on lap one.”
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Whereas the outcomes of the three incidents diverse in severity, all of them occurred as a result of Tsunoda failed to go away sufficient room for a driver who was overtaking him legitimately on the surface. The FIA’s subsequent publication of the racing pointers for 2025 exhibits that on every event Tsunoda’s rivals had fulfilled the requirement for a reliable cross on the surface.
It wasn’t till Austria that the stewards selected to difficulty a penalty for a racing incident between Tsunoda and one other driver. Strikingly, this was the primary race after the FIA printed the rules on racing and penalty factors which the drivers had supposedly been ruled by all 12 months.
Once more, Tsunoda made contact with a driver on the surface of him, this time whereas he was making an attempt to cross Franco Colapinto on the within of flip 4. He despatched one other Alpine spinning and this time the stewards selected to difficulty a penalty.
“The stewards decide that the motive force of automobile 22 [Tsunoda] was absolutely at fault because the entrance axle of automobile 22 by no means bought forward of the mirrors of automobile 43 [Colapinto] earlier than the collision. Therefore automobile 22 didn’t have the suitable to the nook.”
This reads like a constant software of the rules. Nonetheless in relation to the incidents involving Sainz and Gasly which went unpunished, it’s exhausting to see what extra the stewards anticipated these drivers to do.
Tsunoda was no extra satisfied he deserved his different penalties. These had been for overtaking Oscar Piastri’s (broken) McLaren below purple flags throughout a observe session in Canada and for inflicting one other collision at Silverstone, this time with Oliver Bearman. He known as the 10-second time penalty for the latter: “very harsh.”
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“The ten seconds felt extra like two days,” mentioned Tsunoda. “However it’s what they gave. They’ve not been good to me just lately with these penalty factors and [for] overtaking a broken automobile in an in-lap.”
Given the difficulties Tsunoda has had since transferring as much as Purple Bull, hassle with the stewards is the very last thing he wants. But when he appeared unusually invisible to them earlier within the season, he’s solely too seen to them now.
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