Tsunoda calls out stewards: 'I’m the one who always gets penalties'

Yuki Tsunoda believes he is targeted more often than others by F1's stewards, a sentiment expressed by the AlphaTauri driver after he was penalized twice during the Dutch Grand Prix weekend.

In Sunday's race, Tsunoda was handed a five-second penalty and two penalty points after a clash with Mercedes' George Russell in the second half of the event.

The pair, who were both running in the top ten at that point, had barreled down into Zandvoort's Turn 1 when Russell attempted to overtake Tsunoda on the outside only for the Japanese driver to understeer into the Mercedes.

The move, while inadvertent, was frowned upon by the stewards.

"Tsunoda was on the dirty inside line and having braked later he then understeered into Russell. The stewards determined that Tsunoda was predominantly at fault for the collision," they stated in their report.

• Read also: F1i's Driver Ratings for the 2023 Dutch GP

However, the Japanese driver was unsurprisingly at odds with the officials' decision.

"I mean, that’s racing. I didn’t feel like it was aggressive," he said after the race. "I don’t think we touched in the end. But I’m the one who always gets penalties."

It was the second punishment levied upon Tsunoda over the course of the weekend, having been handed a three-place grid drop for impeding Lewis Hamilton in qualifying.

In the race, Tsunoda had run as high as fourth at one point, having switched to the intermediate tyre after the start before reverting to the softs on lap 10 of 72.

But his prolonged run on the red-rimmed tyre eventually saw him tumble down the order and well out of the top ten, the n°22 AlphaTauri crossing the checkered flag P13 which placed him P15 in the final running order after his five-second penalty was applied.

"I think the strategy we took, staying out on the soft tyre, we all agreed on," Tsunoda commented.

"In free practice, the soft looked good and I don’t think we expected such a disadvantage between the used and new [soft] tyre.

"The pace was quite a lot different to what we expected, so in the end it didn’t pay off but I enjoyed battling the other drivers."

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter