F1: Ferrari requests review of Sainz Jr. penalty in Melbourne

–by Mark Cipolloni–

Carlos Sainz Jr. was livid when FIA officials imposed a 5-second penalty at the end of the Australian GP for avoidable contact with Fernando Alonso.

Sainz and his Ferrari team felt the penalty was severe in that it dropped Sainz from 4th all the way down to 12th and out of the points with no chance to recover.

The point I made about this earlier was that the penalty was imposed for a portion of the race that did not count, as everyone (except the crashed Alpine’s which were not the fault of Sainz) got their place back.

It was also on a race restart when everyone was on cold tires and bunched up. Normally, the Stewards are more lenient on standing start restarts given these factors.

Since Alonso got his 3rd place back, then no harm, no foul; hence I felt the penalty had an abnormally negative impact on Sainz.

The Stewards could have added a 5-second penalty to be served on Sainz’s first pitstop at the next race in Baku.

Now, Ferrari have asked Formula One’s governing body to review the five-second penalty that dropped Spaniard Carlos Sainz from fourth to 12th.

Team principal Fred Vasseur told reporters on a Zoom call that the request for a review was submitted to the governing FIA on Thursday.

“The process is that first they will have a look at our petition to see if they can reopen the case and then we’ll have a second hearing a bit later with the same stewards about the decision itself,” he said.

“To reopen the discussion is the first step. The outcome of this will be up to the FIA,” added the Frenchman. “For sure we are expecting a review of the decision because it’s a petition for review. We are not going there to get sympathy.”

In their decision, the Race Stewards wrote: “Notwithstanding the fact that it was the equivalent of a first-lap incident, we considered that there was sufficient gap for Car 55 (Sainz) to take steps to avoid the collision and (he)failed to do so,” they said in a statement at the time.