The announcement of a five-second time penalty for Sainz came through as the order was reset to the previous restart ahead of a final lap to the checkered flag behind the Safety Car.
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According to team manager Frederic Vasseur, Ferrari has petitioned the FIA, the organisation that oversees Formula One, in an effort to obtain a right of review regarding the penalty imposed on Carlos Sainz during the Australian Grand Prix. During a dramatic late restart at Albert Park, Sainz tipped Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin into a spin. Logan Sargeant also crashed into Nyck de Vries’ back, and Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon’s Alpines clashed.
The announcement of a five-second time penalty for Sainz came through as the order was reset to the previous restart ahead of a final lap to the checkered flag behind the Safety Car, causing the Spaniard to broadcast a string of angry messages. Sainz eventually crossed the finish line in fourth place, but the penalty he received caused him to lose points and fall all the way to 12th, leaving him “too angry to talk” in the moments following the race (as you can see in the clip above).
“We did a petition for a review of the case – we sent it to the FIA,” Vasseur confirmed on Thursday. “As we are discussing with the FIA… I don’t want to discuss any details of this discussion. The only thing is [the] Gasly/Ocon [collision], for sure we had also Sargeant/De Vries [colliding] into Turn 1, and the reaction of the stewards was not the same.”
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“The process is that first they will have a look on our petition to see if they can re-open the case, then we’ll have a second hearing a bit later with the same stewards for the next meeting, about the decision itself. What we can expect is at least to have an open discussion with them, also for the good of the sport to avoid to have these kind of decisions when you have three cases on the same corner and not the same decision.”
As per Article 14 of the FIA’s International Sporting Code, competitors can request a right of review up to 14 days after a ruling from the stewards if “a significant and relevant new element is discovered which was unavailable to the parties seeking the review at the time of the decision concerned”.
Carlos Sainz was miffed that he had dropped from fourth to 12th place at the finish line of the Australian Grand Prix due to a penalty for colliding with Fernando Alonso. Sainz and Alonso engaged in a wheel-to-wheel battle into Turn 1 on the penultimate restart of a race that featured numerous Safety Cars and red flags, with the Ferrari driver sending his Aston Martin rival into a spin. Before the final restart and lap to the finish, when his engineer informed Sainz of the penalty, the Spaniard was heard yelling over the radio and pleading with the stewards to hold off until he had spoken with them in person.
“Oh, sorry. Right now, I cannot talk. I’m too angry, too disappointed, too… I just cannot say anything,” the Spaniard said when asked about the matter post race. “I prefer to go to the stewards, get the penalty away, because I don’t think I deserve it and it’s the most unfair penalty I’ve seen in my life. I will go first to the stewards. I needed to come first to the TV pen; if I don’t come [here] they put me in another penalty, so…”
