Sunoda notched his third retirement of the season and extended his point-less run to nine races – the longest run of any driver bar Nicholas Latifi – after stopping on track, having thought his tyres were improperly fitted in his Lap 44 stoppage, before being called back into the pits. After leaving the pits on Lap 48, he came to a halt and brought out the Virtual Safety Car.
“Having seen that the [hard] compound was working well, we decided to also pit Yuki for them. After the pit stop he reported something strange at the rear of the car. We called him in again to change the tyres and immediately after, we had a car failure. This is currently under investigation within the team,” said Claudio Balestri, AlphaTauri’s Chief Engineer of Vehicle Performance.