Tsunoda pulled to the side of the track on lap 43, informing AlphaTauri over the radio that not all of his tires were in place after his pit stop.
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.
But shortly after heading back out, Tsunoda was told by his engineer to stop the car because the team had detected a problem. The Japanese parked close to a marshal’s station, but a Virtual Safety Car was still needed to remove his car safely.
AlphaTauri’s chief performance engineer, Claudio Balestri , called the problem “a fault with the car” in the team’s post-race press release, confirming that it was being investigated.
“After the pit stop, he reported something strange at the rear of the car, we called him again to change the tires and immediately after that we had a fault with the car,” said Balestri.
“That is currently being investigated by the team.”
Asked by Motorsport.com about the initial stop, Tsunoda said he thought there was “a problem” that was “pretty clear, especially on the left rear”.
“I was told by the engineers to stop, but we didn’t see any clear issues or any issues in the data,” Tsunoda said.
“That’s why we went back into the pits to change the tyres. After that, we did see a clear problem in the data. That’s why we stopped.”
But Tsunoda said the mishap persisted as soon as he left the pits, and that he felt there was “only one wheel that was slipping”.
“I was kind of skidding down the straight, like I was doing counter steering down the straight,” Tsunoda said.
“Because I didn’t feel like it wasn’t normal.”
Tsunoda had been in contention for his first points since the Spanish Grand Prix in May, having reached Q3 on Saturday ahead of team-mate Pierre Gasly.
The Japanese considered his performance to have been “pretty strong” but wanted to get a clean weekend to show his true potential.
“First I need a clean week, I think after that I’ll be able to get into a good rhythm,” Tsunoda said.
“Currently I don’t have it at all. So I just want to get back into a good rhythm and consistently score points.”
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”.
“After that, he headed back to the pits where the mechanics refastened the seatbelts,” reads the stewards’ bulletin.
“It is not possible to determine exactly how far the seatbelt had been loosened by the pilot.”
The stewards’ document also states that it was a differential problem that caused Tsunoda to stop initially on the track, something Tsunoda also claimed over the radio .
Additional information by Oleg Karpov
