Pierre Gasly put blame on a surprised Yuki Tsunoda in their F1 Monaco GP clash, but the FIA stewards doesn’t think the Japanese driver did anything wrong.
Both Red Bull’s Tsunoda and Alpine’s Gasly went for an early stop when the Virtual Safety Car was deployed to clear some debris in F1 Monaco GP. It dropped them behind the Mercedes pair, with the Frenchman right behind the Japanese driver for early part of the grand prix.
Gasly looked to have some pace behind him and hustled Tsunoda as much. He eventually tried a move at the exit of the tunnel but misjudged and their wheels touched. It sent the Frenchman airbourne for a moment, as his suspension broke and he nearly hit the side of teammate Franco Colapinto too.
He returned to the pits and retired. Post-race, Gasly put the blame on Tsunoda for moving under braking where he explained how it panned out in few laps of pushing. The Frenchman was certain that the Japanese moved to his right under braking when he was to the left in the previous laps.
This caught him out and they made contact. “No, no, it was…maybe…TV broadcast, but this [brake stopped] was following the incident already with Yuki,” said Gasly to media. “I had the brakes [when we collided]. It is just that Yuki made a mistake before the tunnel, so I got very close to him, and every lap he was braking on the racing line on the right.
“This lap, I was very close, so I decided to stay on the left. He started braking on the left, I committed to the right, and then he moved back onto the racing line, but I was already committing and braking later than him, so I just couldn’t go anywhere. It’s just, for me, here, you’ve got to stick to your line. You already have no space to put two cars together. You can defend the position.
“But then, it’s not a case of, ‘I go right, I close the door to the right, and then if you try to go left, then I squeeze you to the left as well’. It’s a track where it’s already hard enough. I just thought he’ll leave the space,” summed up Gasly, who was fine when alerted about Tsunoda’s radio comment of calling him an idiot. The Frenchman stuck his guns noting that it wasn’t his finest moves.
“It’s fine,” continued Gasly. “I know it’s in the heat of the moment. I don’t really understand; on a braking zone, on a normal track, you don’t move, so once you hit the brake, you stick to where you are. He clearly jumped on the brake on the left side of the line and then went over the white line. I’m sure we’ll chat about it, but I don’t think it was his finest move.”
Tsunoda, meanwhile, was surprised by Gasly pinning the blame on him. He would do the similar thing again the next time considering he was doing the same all the time. “It’s a big mystery; I didn’t do anything silly, moving under the braking or whatever,” he said to media. “I don’t know what happened to be honest – I just remember, retrospectively, [Gasly] crashing into me.
“What? I mean, I don’t think I did anything wrong, to be honest. Yeah, I will do the same if I have one more time. Because I was hugging the wall the whole time. I knew which way I would take and I didn’t want to move under the braking, so yeah. In terms of damage, not sure, I mean, I’ll be surprised if I didn’t have anything.
“But there’s a piece of something that made it unstable or slightly offset in terms of car balance. But I looked casually after the race, it looks okay at least on components side, so that is good news,” summed up Tsunoda, who lamented the bad qualifying for the result. His early stop didn’t gain him anything since Visa Cash App RB, Williams and Mercedes played the team game.
Had he qualified better, it may have brought different results, but he was pleased with the pace until FP3. “I mean, longest race ever,” continued Tsunoda. “We had to try something. In that position, probably we had to do something, especially the two teams ahead having their two drivers. I knew they were going to play some game. I just put myself in that situation, so just need to do better in qualifying.
“The pace was okay. To be honest, the qualifying was really, really messy. I knew it wouldn’t be straightforward, it’s Monaco. But yeah, I was pretty messy with everything. Also, I could have done it better when it count, like in Q2, it was only one lap, I could have done better. It was not even end of the…I couldn’t have fresh tyre at best track condition.
“So anyway, positive is the pace was there until FP3, but yeah, very frustrating that I wasn’t able to use it,” summed up Tsunoda, as the FIA stewards cleared the Japanese of any wrongdoing as well. The post-race investigation ruled out Gasly’s thoughts about the Red Bull driver moving under braking. As per the video and telemetry evidences, they couldn’t see any glaring movement to upset anyone behind.
They put the blame on Gasly for not being in control. His DNF helped him slightly after he was only handed a reprimand. Team boss Christian Horner felt the same that the Frenchman misjudged the move. He sided with Tsunoda on the qualifying aspect as well.
“For Yuki, we did the inverse,” said Horner to media. “And when lap one initially looked like he would get, a significant benefit from it, but then everybody started to drive extremely slowly as they started to play around with the tactics. So he just, you know, he was basically on the same set of tyres for the whole race and did his fastest laps at the end there.
“When he finally got some clear traffic, he was just sat in a queue the entire race. So very, very difficult for him. It wasn’t just Liam. It was Carlos and then Alex and then Antonelli. So, you know, the poor guy ran into three cars all. You know, the problem for Yuki was qualifying out of position and then, you know, he had done his job. Remarkable [with no damage].
“Yeah, there was no damage that we could see on the sensors. So it looked like a misjudgment from Pierre to, you know, such was the speed of the impact,” summed up Horner, who noted that his Imola crash has put him in a bit of a jeopardy with new parts to be on par with Max Verstappen.
“Yuki is in the position that he is because unfortunately they damaged in that shunt last weekend,” he continued. “But as we manage to catch back up, then he will get the pass back on the car [as soon as possible].”
Here’s what stewards said: https://www.fia.com/system/files/decision-document/2025_monaco_grand_prix_-_infringement_-_car_10_-_incident_with_car_22.pdf
Here’s the collision: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-monaco-grand-prix-gasly-out-of-the-race-after-crashing-into-tsunoda.1833099567810205666
Here’s Max Verstappen on Monaco GP
Here’s how F1 Monaco GP panned out
