AlphaTauri is in the eye of the storm, after Yuki Tsunoda motivated the departure of a Virtual Safety Car (VSC) in the last Grand Prix of the Netherlands. The Japanese driver stopped his car on lap 43 of the race, and reported problems with the anchorage of his tires on the radio, and unbuckled his belt to leave.
Half a minute later, the team told Yuki Tsunoda to continue as they saw no indication that anything had gone wrong. He returned to the pitlane and there they re-tightened his seat belts and put another set of tires on him.
However, shortly after returning to the track they told him from the wall to stop the car again because, this time, they had detected a fault. The Japanese parked close to a marshal’s station, but a Virtual Safety Car was still needed to remove his car safely.
That maneuver ended up indirectly helping Max Verstappen, who comfortably won his home Grand Prix. This fact was enough for a whole wave of followers to start pouring accusations of sabotage on Hannah Schmitz , Red Bull’s director of strategy, considering that she had ordered AlphaTauri, Red Bull’s ‘b’ team, to stop Tsunoda ‘s car in track.
Barely 24 hours after the end of the race, the Italian team has issued a statement defending itself from what they describe as “attacks” , launched mostly on social networks by accounts with profile photos of Lewis Hamilton.
“It is truly disheartening to read some of the messages being directed at our team and Hannah Schmitz, Red Bull’s chief strategy officer,” AlphaTauri said. “Such hateful behavior cannot be tolerated, and it is unacceptable that we are accused of cheating, which is totally untrue.”
“We have always competed being independent, fair and in the most respectful and sporting way possible. Yuki [Tsunoda] had a fault with his car and the team did not detect it immediately, so he was forced to stop in the middle of the race. hint. Suggesting anything different from this is insulting and categorically incorrect”, settle in the writing spread on their social networks.
Tsunoda received a reprimand from the stewards for loosening his seat belts while in the cockpit after his initial stop, upon which they said he was “ready to leave the car and began to loosen his seat belt, without removing it from the all”.
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