Yuki Tsunoda was surprised to send Lance Stroll into a spin in Formula 1’s Brazilian Grand Prix, a contact that led to his race unravelling.
Tsunoda was in 16th following the race’s safety car restart on lap six when, exiting Ferradura behind Franco Colapinto, the Red Bull driver braked much later, swerved to avoid the Alpine, and ended up tapping Aston Martin’s Stroll into a spin.
The collision meant Tsunoda was awarded a 10-second penalty, which Red Bull failed to serve properly in his next pitstop, with the Japanese racer getting a further 10 seconds as a consequence.
“To be honest, I didn’t even notice the contact,” he said in the post-race media pen. “I don’t know, I just have to review what’s happened, to be honest.”
Tsunoda clarified that he “had some damage, but it was not big”, while the penalties were extremely detrimental to his race – which he finished in 17th and last position.
“Shame about the contact,” he added. “But I think the pace was okay, especially in the last stint. I was completely out of position, so…
Yuki Tsunoda, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Mark Thompson / Getty Images
“Shame about the penalties and extra pitstop that was not in my control. A shame, because something worked well, but at the same time something didn’t work. For me, this weekend, nothing worked at all.”
That’s a fair assessment from Tsunoda who qualified 18th for the sprint and 19th for the main race, amid a tough weekend for Red Bull – which Max Verstappen salvaged with third position in the grand prix.
Team principal Laurent Mekies still sees reasons to be satisfied with Tsunoda – with obvious caveats.
“It’s a bit unfortunate,” Mekies commented. “He lost a lot of time in the contact, got the extra 10-second penalty, then we made a mistake on our side and we got another 10-second extra penalty. It’s a shame it doesn’t seem to be going our way.
“His last stint in clean air is strong. You can do it yourself if you take the race plot and remove these two times 10 seconds, you actually end up in a decent fight for points. But again, it’s the same thing, ‘would’ and ‘should’ don’t win races. We can only pocket the last strong stint in free air that he has done.”
Very hypothetically, removing 20 seconds from Tsunoda’s race time would vault him up to seventh in the race classification – but there was a 10-way fight for the last four points-scoring positions, which significantly slowed down the cars ahead in the latter stages of the race.
Additional reporting by Federico Faturos and Jake Boxall-Legge
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