RB Wants To 'Talk To FIA' After Magnussen's 'Unsportsmanlike Behavior' In Jeddah

Monday, 11 March 2024 at 15:15

RB racing director Alan Permane asserted his team would talk to FIA after Kevin Mangussen's "unsportsmanlike behavior" prevented RB from achieving points in Jeddah.

Since the beginning of the season, the top five teams have been clearly faster than the rest of the grid. This means that going into each race, drivers from the bottom five teams only have a chance of fighting for points if someone in the front is out of the race.

That is what happened with Lance Stroll during the 2024 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. The Canadian driver crashed his Aston Martin, and that opened the fight for the P10.

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In the end, Haas driver Nico Hulkenberg crossed the line tenth and received a valuable one point for his team. However, RB believes this wasn't achieved with sportsmanlike behavior. Alan Permane said:

"We started him [Tsunoda] on the medium tire, and when the Safety Car came out, pitted him for the hard compound. What then happened was a little difficult to take."

Haas's second driver, Kevin Magnussen, overtook RB's Japanese driver by going off the track after the safety car restart. That isn't allowed, so he received a 10-second penalty.

But crucially, he stayed ahead of Tsunoda, and then, he slowed down and started defending, holding up the RB driver with the rest of the field behind him to allow his teammate Nico Hulkenberg in front a free pit stop.

That worked for the American team to perfection. On the other hand, RB believe that this was Haas's plan from the beginning and don't see it as correct. Permane added:

"Magnussen drove off the track to deliberately put himself in front of Yuki and then slowed him down by up to two seconds a lap, which allowed Hulkenberg, who hadn’t stopped yet, to create a gap and, of course, pit in front of all the cars behind."

"That, to me, doesn’t seem correct, and is the very definition of unsportsmanlike behaviour. I’m sure we and other teams will talk to the FIA about it for future races."