Rafael Nadal wants tennis players to be given more time between points after he was punished for his tardiness at the French Open.

The Spaniard, who is famous for his meticulous routines on court, is on track for a 10th title at Roland Garros.

He thrashed compatriot Roberto Bautista Agut 6-1 6-2 6-2 to book a spot in the quarter-finals, but was hit with two code violations in the process.

Umpire Carlos Ramos twice warned Nadal for slow play and then docked him a serve after he took more than 25 seconds between points.

“If you want to play well, you have to let players breathe a little,” Nadal said.

“We’re not machines that cannot think. That’s my viewpoint.”

The 25-second limit is not monitored exactly by officials, who only penalise players when they have clearly breached it.

Nadal is one of the slowest players on the tour, and at January’s Australian Open was penalised for the same act.

But he felt on this occasion that Ramos was looking for him to slip up.

“This umpire is, I think, trying, in a certain way, to look for my faults, my errors,” he said.

He added that he hoped umpires would be focusing on the on-court action instead of watching the clock when he played.

“Theoretically, the umpires are here to analyse the match and they are not here to use the stopwatch, otherwise we should have a stopwatch on the court,” he said.

“That’s the whole point. Some dictate things or give their calls in a certain way. Other umpires have different styles.”

Nadal plays another countryman, in Pablo Carreno Busta, in his last-eight clash at Roland Garros.

He has lost just two men’s singles matches in his glittering French Open career, to Robin Soderling (fourth round, 2009) and Novak Djokovic (quarter-finals, 2015).