With the completion of the Chinese Grand Prix, round 5 of the 2024 Formula 1 season, the Drivers’ Championship begins to settle in thanks to the performances of the different drivers and also their respective teams.
Max Verstappen once again emerged as the winner of Sunday’s main race, while he also took victory in the sprint race, with teammate Sergio Perez finishing in P3 and Lando Norris splitting both Red Bulls.
On the other hand, we have some teams that failed to achieve a good performance throughout the weekend. Some of them were Alpine, with their cars finishing in P11 and P13; Sauber, with its cars in P14 and one retired and, who we will talk about in this article, RB F1.
The team that has new name for this year failed to score any points in Shanghai. With this weekend being a Sprint format, Daniel Ricciardo finishied in P11 on Saturday.
In Sunday’s main race, a rather controversial crash involving Lance Stroll on a Safety Car restart caused the Australian driver to retire from the race just after the halfway point. It had been by far his most encouraging weekend of the season to that point.
For his part, Yuki Tsunoda had an extremely difficult weekend. The Japanese driver struggled with one-lap pace, starting both races in P19. In the Sprint, Tsunoda only managed to make up 3 positions to finish in P16, while an incident on lap 27 at turn 6 in Sunday’s race with Kevin Magnussen caused him to retire from the Grand Prix.
Despite not having great pace during the event, the Japanese driver commented that he feels frustrated by the way his Sunday came to an end as the Danish driver took him out while battling for P13.
The 2014 Australian Grand Prix podium finisher tagged Tsunoda’s right rear tyre with his left front, resulting in terminal damage for the RB and a puncture for the Haas.
Nico Rosberg was far from impressed, describing the Magnussen’s manoeuvre as “seriously ridiculous” and added it was “poor driving”.
Although Magnussen was found to be at fault in this crash, so much so that the FIA decided to impose a 10-second penalty and 2 points on his Super Licence, it was of no consolation to Tsunoda.
“I think I was pretty happy with my progress until then. [I am] pretty frustrated with how I ended up especially just as I gave him quite a lot of space and just ended up with a DNF, so yeah, it’s pretty frustrating. Very annoyed.
“10 seconds is better for sure than 5 seconds. And I think that’s the minimum penalty that they should give,” Tsunoda added.
Magnussen gave his version of events post-race after finishing 16th. The Dane claimed he could not do anything more to avoid the collision, even if replays showed he was given plenty of room on the exit of turn 6.
“I don’t know. It seemed to me like was going very wide and then he made it stick anyway.
“I was kind of locked in my rotation. I couldn’t really do anything more.
“But they deemed it was a penalty for me — it is what it is.”
Asked if he felt he should have been given an opportunity to give his side of events to the stewards after the race instead of getting handed a 10-second penalty rather quickly, Magnussen doubled down on his opinion, believing it was a racing incident.
“It feels like I did what I could.
“When we had contact there was a car width, so I think we just misread each other a little bit, I guess.
“I need to review it, but to me it might as well have been a racing incident.”
