Sebastien Buemi is not impressed with the decision to penalise him for the Hungarian GP, saying he no idea Nick Heidfeld was alongside him in Germany.
Heidfeld crashed out of last Sunday's German GP when he came up alongside Buemi, who appeared to be close the door on the Lotus Renault GP driver.
The Nurburgring stewards investigated the incident and hit Buemi with a five-place grid slot penalty for this weekend's Hungarian GP.
However, the Toro Rosso driver reckons it was a harsh call.
"It was a hard penalty," Buemi told Autosport.
"The images from the front are very difficult to understand because you can't really know where Nick is comparative to my car, especially under braking.
"If you look at some of the side and rear footage, you can understand. I strongly believe that before the braking, he was still behind me. I took my normal line and it was while we were braking that he threw himself into the space.
"I definitely wasn't expecting him to do this under braking because the chance for him to overtake without contact was very small."
Buemi is also adamant that the stewards were wrong in their verdict that he moved over before hitting the brakes to take the corner. But, having said that, he understand why they came to that view given their camera angles.
"The stewards decided something else. When I looked at the front camera view, I knew it was going to be difficult (in the stewards' hearing) because you don't know where he is (relative to me). But he was not side by side. The stewards had only the front camera and a side camera where you hardly see anything.
"They believed that Nick was already alongside before we braked. But I am sure that was not the case."
