In the final minutes of the second practice session of the Bahrain GP, a message appeared on the screens warning that car number 22 and number 16 were under investigation for an incident on track.
He was referring to the cars of Yuki Tsunoda and Charles Leclerc, who met at the exit of the Turn 8 hairpin as they accelerated down the left-hander.
The one from AlphaTauri got in the way of the Ferrari, ruining his lap, and for this reason he was called to testify together with the Monegasque.
And in a bulletin issued at 8:19 p.m. Bahrain (almost an hour and a half from the end of FP2), F1 imposed a reprimand on the young Japanese driver for “breaking Article 37.5 of the FIA Sporting Regulations”.
This is Tsunoda’s first reprimand of the year and indeed the first of the season for any pilot.
This was explained in the FIA statement: “The Stewards listened to the driver of car 22 (Yuki Tsunoda), the driver of car 16 (Charles Leclerc) and representatives of their teams, and examined the video and radio evidence of the teams “.
“Car 22 (TSU) hampered car 16 (LEC) who was on a fast lap on new tires at turn 8, causing car 8 [sic: the statement says car 8 but this is a mistake, since no pilot wears that number, it refers to 16] he will abort his lap”.
“The #22 driver says that he was pushing on the warm-up lap to start a long and heavily fueled run. However, the Stewards consider that a driver on an out lap should always be on the lookout for cars faster than they approach and, although that did not lead to a dangerous situation, they determine that it is a breach of the previous regulations and impose a reprimand in this case”.
Among the changes in Formula 1 for this 2022 season, there is the one that increases the number of reprimands that are needed to receive a punishment on the grid. Now, it takes five (until 2021 it was three) reprimands to receive a bigger penalty, of 10 positions on the grid for the next race.
This sanction carries no points on Tsunoda’s super license. In that sense, the one from AlphaTauri is the driver who runs the most risks, since he has 8 penalty points and, if he reached 12 before April 18, he would be sanctioned with missing a race. For their part, Sergio Pérez and Max Verstappen have seven, and in the case of the Dutchman he does not recover points until September, so he will play it during the first part of the World Cup.
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