The Williams team has submitted a request for review, a right to review, for Carlos Sainz‘s ten-second time penalty. To his own great surprise, the Spaniard received the time penalty in Zandvoort for an incident with Liam Lawson in the Tarzan corner. According to Sainz, the stewards realized immediately after the race that they had made a wrong judgment: ‘If you look at the onboard footage, you can clearly see why I should not have received a penalty’.
Carlos Sainz was not pleased with the stewards after the Dutch GP. The Spaniard even called the ten-second time penalty he received for a collision with Liam Lawson a ‘complete joke’. The incident occurred shortly after the safety car restart, when Lawson attempted an overtaking maneuver on the inside of the Spaniard in the Tarzan corner. The New Zealander hit Sainz’s right front wheel, causing him to suffer a flat tire. To the great surprise of the Williams driver, he was held responsible for the incident by the stewards.
After the race, Sainz went to the stewards to seek an explanation. “I had the opportunity to sit with them for fifteen minutes to analyze the incident,” the Williams driver explains in Monza. “And it became clear to me that – as soon as they had all the evidence properly lined up and looked at the places they needed to look at to make the right decision – they realized that the decision taken was probably not the best. We are now trying to see if we can gather enough evidence to assess whether we can change the outcome of the penalty.”
Request for Review
Williams has now also submitted a request for review, or right of review in official terms, to the FIA. “It’s important for us to understand how we should race in the future and we hope for a positive outcome,” the team states. It is now up to Williams to come up with ‘new, significant and relevant’ evidence. Charles Leclerc, for one, is confident of a favorable outcome.
“What happened in my case in Zandvoort was, in my opinion, the result of a hasty decision, without looking deeply enough into the incident,” Leclerc asserts. “If you strictly apply the regulations as they stand, you can understand why they would want to penalize me. But as soon as you watch the onboard footage and thoroughly analyze what really happened, it’s clear why I should not have been penalized.” The Spaniard therefore reiterates his call for permanent stewards in Formula 1.
