The 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix was another disappointing weekend for Visa Cash App RB’s Yuki Tsunoda who was forced to retire from Sunday’s race after a collision with Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll. This was the second race in a row that Tsunoda could not finish, having collided with Haas’ Nico Hülkenberg during the Italian Grand Prix at the beginning of September.
Speaking after his retirement on Sunday, Tsunoda confirmed that though he had not had the chance to see a replay of the accident, his retirement, which he described as a “great shame” had been purely due to the damage sustained during his contact with Stroll.
“Yeah, [I] haven’t seen it but great shame.”
The Japanese driver explained that retirement would have been unavoidable due to the “pretty big damage” sustained by his VCARB 01, especially as he felt that the loss of grip had been worsening with each lap.
“Yeah, it was pretty big damage.
“Obviously inside the car was, I mean, acceptable. Yeah, obviously a lot of outside [damage]. Loss of grip, I felt inside the car. Yeah, it was probably getting worse and worse lap by lap and yeah, very curious to see what’s happened there.”
He expressed disappointment at being forced out of the race so early on for the second time in a row, describing Stroll’s challenge as “unnecessary” before adding that the situation was “very frustrating.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not the way I obviously wanted to end it.
“I mean, it seems like he just sent it in a corner that’s very unnecessary again.
“So two times in a row, same side of the car got damaged and yeah, very frustrating, yeah.”
Lance Stroll also addressed the collision between himself and Tsunoda with the Canadian driver stating that, while he had not seen the video, in the car, it had felt as if Tsunoda had turned into him due to the VCARB driver being unaware of their positioning relative to each other. He added, however, that such collisions often occurred during races, especially when the drivers were “racing hard” as they had been.
“I think so. I haven’t seen the video yet but that’s what it felt like in the car.
“I dived down the inside. We’re all racing hard on the first lap, though, these things happen.
“But is felt as if he didn’t really know I was there.”
While Stroll did not need to retire from the race as early as Tsunoda had, he too was ultimately unable to complete the race, retiring in Lap 45 after experiencing issues with his brakes due to the damage sustained during his collision with Tsunoda. He stated that the decision had been made to retire as he had not wanted to take any risks, especially with him not being in a points-scoring position.
“We had some damage in the car.
“And towards the end, I could start to feel the brake going, the pedal going along behind Ocon.
“I didn’t want to take any risks and we weren’t scoring points, so it was time to call it.”
He added: “I think we damaged the floor on lap one with the puncture and scraping the tarmac.”
Having completed more than 90 per cent of the race, Stroll was classified nineteenth – a disappointing result for the Canadian especially in light of the strong performance by his teammate Fernando Alonso who scored eight points after finishing the race sixth.
This, Stroll acknowledged, was one of the positive things to take from the weekend, before adding that the team would be looking to see what could be accomplished in Singapore.
“Yeah, for sure. Some good points for the team.
“Let’s see what we can do in Singapore.”
