Ferrari appeals the punishment from Madrid in the last race.
The Ferrari team has decided to appeal the five-second penalty that the FIA imposed on Carlos Sainz for his contact with Fernando Alonso at the end of the Australian Grand Prix. Let us remember that, in that test, Sainz was penalized just before a restart with a ‘safety car’ with one lap to go in the race, which made it impossible for him to make up for lost time.
In that situation, what would probably have been the most correct thing, and this is how Ferrari details it, is to wait for Carlos to share his version of what happened with the commissioners, since the results would in no case vary, since the race was already finished. .
That decision was the one made in this same race with the accident involving Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon – which ended without penalty – and also Nyck de Vries and Logan Sargeant, which was not even investigated. However, in the case of Carlos, the stewards considered that the Spaniard could have avoided the incident and that he had space to do so… even if it was on the first lap after a restart.
Sainz, who fell from fourth to twelfth place in the classification due to the punishment imposed by the commissioners, desperately asked on the radio to be allowed to explain himself… but the FIA did not want to do so. Now, a week after that race, the main Ferrari team, Frédéric Vasseur, has explained that they are going to ask the FIA for a review.
“We have made the request to review the case,” Vasseur said in a telematic meeting with the media, according to AS. “First, let them see our request to see if they can review the penalty. Then we would have a second meeting with the same stewards (of the Australian GP) to see if they can change the decision.”
“We hope to have an open discussion with them. For the good of this sport, avoid that if you have three incidents on the same curve, the decisions are different,” he said.
“The biggest frustration was for Carlos. You heard it on the radio: he couldn’t even talk to the stewards. It was a special case, and it would have made sense to wait to hear from him, because the race was over and the penalty didn’t affect the podium.” Vasseur said.
The meeting with the stewards could be at the next round of the season in Baku “or before”, in case the FIA agrees to review what happened. The main complaint of the Ferrari manager is that very different things were decided in three similar incidents, and that is something that is difficult for him to understand.
“I don’t want to blame anyone. I’ve been doing this job for 33 years and in every incident you have two sides. It’s not that easy, but in this particular case, with three red flags and all that… That’s where the frustration comes from. We think the situation of Ocon and Gasly treated of different way”, commented.
Curiously, the incident between the two Frenchmen from the Alpine team ended without penalty. And it is that, in case Gasly had been penalized and considered guilty of the accident, he would have exhausted all the points of his license and would have been punished without racing in Azerbaijan. Obviously, the Alpine team did not protest this, as it would have been a shot to his own foot.
It has not been a brilliant start to the season for Ferrari F1, which only has 26 points after three races and is in fourth place in the Constructors’ World Championship. His best result to date is fourth place for Carlos Sainz in Bahrain. And this can be considered a disappointment, considering that Ferrari was drivers’ and teams’ runner-up in 2023.
