Photo: Daimler Global Press

Daniel Juncadella highly critical after penalty costs him the victory at the Red Bull Ring

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Mercedes-AMG driver Daniel Juncadella was having a near perfect day at the Red Bull Ring as the Spaniard had scored his third pole position of the season, and was on his way to a second career victory.

Juncadella took the lead at the start, but lost it to Audi’s Mike Rockenfeller after the first safety car intervention, but was able to regain the place on lap 13. “I made a mistake in the beginning, but I got it back and had a lot of fun in the race.”

The 27-year-old opened a gap to Rockenfeller, and remained unchallenged throughout the race: “I had a lot of fun, a really good pit stop. Everything was going well for us.”

Disaster struck for the Team HWA driver when the safety car was called into action after BMW’s Timo Glock stopped in the circuit, with the race restarted with less than four minutes left on the clock.

Juncadella led the pack in at the side-by-side restart, and as they entered the main straight, the Spaniard started accelerating before the safety car start/finish line, with Juncadella hit with a drive-through penalty on the last lap. The #23 Mercedes-AMG took the chequered flag in first place, but had 30 seconds added to his total race time, officially classified in 14th position.

“I don’t know what to say really, I still don’t understand the reasons why I got the penalty,” Juncadella said. “I was driving at 80 (km/h) which is the speed that we should do at the restart.

“I’m sorry for the guys because they did a great job, the car was really good. I had a really, really good race,” added the Spaniard,

BMW Team RMG driver Marco Wittmann, who was just behind Juncadella in the formation, said on his Twitter account: “In my view (just behind him) don’t see any mistake he did! A shame for a guy who did a great race!”

Juncadella was very critical of the decision of the series: “It’s just a shame that such a nice championship is spoilt by these little things that have nothing to do with us.

“It was a perfect race, but somebody didn’t want us to win today.”