Yuki Tsunoda has hit out the five-second penalty decision that dropped him out of the point-finishing positions for a Turn 1 incident with Zhou Guanyu.
The AlphaTauri driver was defending P9 from Zhou – and the two championship points along with it – through Turn 1 on lap 59, when Zhou approached on the outside.
The two drivers were almost neck-and-neck through the apex of Turn 1 with Zhou edging ahead. But as the pair approached Turn 2, Zhou darted into the run-off area to avoid a collision between the two.
The Stewards awarded Tsunoda with a five-second time penalty for the incident, dropping him from P9 to a point-less finishing position of P12.
However, Tsunoda believes that he left an adequate amount of room for the Alfa Romeo driver to progress on track.
“I feel like it’s really harsh that penalty to be honest from my perspective,” he said after the race.
“I gave it literally everything, every lap. There was still space there, it’s just the other car suddenly [went into the] run-off area and pretends like he got forced.”
Onboard footage from the incident shows that Tsunoda was steering away from Zhou, rather than towards the driver but nonetheless, the Stewards found Tsunoda in breach of Appendix L, Chapter IV Article 2b of the International Sporting Code due to Zhou being ahead at the apex of Turn 1, concluding that Tsunoda forced Zhou off the track.
“He could have stayed on the track from my perspective,” Tsunoda added.. “But I just accept the reality that I lost points after that big race so it’s disappointing. Really disappointing.”
Tsunoda has had a positive start to the season but the AlphaTauri driver has only managed to score points in Azerbaijan and Australia and after losing out on points in Barcelona, the Japanese driver has his sights set on further points finishes this season.
“I’ll try my best for the next one, we qualify higher to have a higher position to start and try to score points more.”
