Tsunoda says the stewards have “not been nice to me” as penalty points mount up · RaceFans

“They’ve not been nice to me recently,” lamented Yuki Tsunoda after the stewards handed him penalty points for the third time in as many rounds at Silverstone.

He had a clean licence following the Spanish Grand Prix at the start of last month but has swiftly risen to five penalty points. While Tsunoda feels the stewards are suddenly being hard on him, an opposite case could easily be made: that they were too lenient on him previously.

Carlos Sainz Jnr might well make that case. Tsunoda made contact with him twice in the space of four rounds.

In Bahrain, Sainz was in the process of overtaking Tsunoda around the outside of the first corner. As the Williams went around the Red Bull, Tsunoda oversteered into him, causing significant damage to the FW47’s floor which ruined Sainz’s race. The stewards took no action.

Three races later at Imola, Sainz again passed Tsunoda on the outside, this time heading into Tamburello. Again Tsunoda made contact, albeit more lightly, and Sainz was able to keep going after passing him. “Again this guy touched me like in Bahrain,” the Williams driver remarked, as the stewards noted the incident but again issued no penalty.

Remarkably, Tsunoda was involved in another similar incident between those two races. Pierre Gasly came out of turn three alongside Tsunoda and was slightly ahead of him on the outside as they turned into the next corner.

Gasly left Tsunoda as much room as possible but the Red Bull driver ran wide into the Alpine and sent it spinning into a barrier, putting both drivers out. The stewards decided to treat it as a “lap one incident” – and therefore deserved to be considered more leniently – though they admitted “we considered whether this was properly a lap one incident or really an incident between two cars (and no others) on lap one.”

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While the outcomes of the three incidents varied in severity, they all happened because Tsunoda failed to leave enough room for a driver who was overtaking him legitimately on the outside. The FIA’s subsequent publication of the racing guidelines for 2025 shows that on each occasion Tsunoda’s rivals had fulfilled the requirement for a legitimate pass on the outside.

It wasn’t until Austria that the stewards chose to issue a penalty for a racing incident between Tsunoda and another driver. Strikingly, this was the first race after the FIA published the guidelines on racing and penalty points which the drivers had supposedly been governed by all year.

Again, Tsunoda made contact with a driver on the outside of him, this time while he was trying to pass Franco Colapinto on the inside of turn four. He sent another Alpine spinning and this time the stewards chose to issue a penalty.

“The stewards determine that the driver of car 22 [Tsunoda] was fully at fault as the front axle of car 22 never got ahead of the mirrors of car 43 [Colapinto] before the collision. Hence car 22 did not have the right to the corner.”

This reads like a consistent application of the guidelines. However when it comes to the incidents involving Sainz and Gasly which went unpunished, it’s hard to see what more the stewards expected those drivers to do.

Tsunoda was no more convinced he deserved his other penalties. These were for overtaking Oscar Piastri’s (damaged) McLaren under red flags during a practice session in Canada and for causing another collision at Silverstone, this time with Oliver Bearman. He called the 10-second time penalty for the latter: “very harsh.”

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“The 10 seconds felt more like two days,” said Tsunoda. “But it’s what they gave. They’ve not been nice to me recently with those penalty points and [for] overtaking a damaged car in an in-lap.”

Given the difficulties Tsunoda has had since moving up to Red Bull, trouble with the stewards is the last thing he needs. But if he seemed strangely invisible to them earlier in the season, he is only too visible to them now.

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