Ferrari are hoping to appeal Carlos Sainz’s penalty following a wild and controversial ending to the Australian Grand Prix last Sunday.
The Spaniard was awarded a five-second penalty for hitting and ultimately spinning Fernando Alonso on the second restart at turn one. However, a red flag was thrown almost immediately after the contact, and the last lap was behind the Safety Car as the drivers cruised across the line in order.
As positions were decided on the order of the second restart, Sainz would have finished P4. But his penalty saw him demoted to 12th, and he was furious after the race. Such was his anger, he could barely speak about it to Sky Sports.
Photo credit: Scuderia Ferrari
The Ferrari team boss explained to selected media outlets about their decision to try and successfully get a review of the incident.
“You have 14 days to register the petition with the FIA. We have done that in time,” stated Vasseur on Thursday.
“The hearing could be at the next race in Baku (on April 30) or before. We would prefer to do it before.
“The FIA will have a look at our petition, and see if they can re-open the case. We would then have a second hearing with the same stewards about the decision itself.
“The biggest frustration for Carlos, and you could hear it on the radio, was that he didn’t have a hearing because the case was very special.
“It would have made sense to have the hearing before the five-second penalty was applied.”
Many people were left baffled by the fact that Sainz was awarded a penalty, but Pierre Gasly managed to avoid one following his collision with Esteban Ocon. The aforementioned French driver is only two points away from a race ban at present.
In a third incident at the same time, Logan Sargeant was not even investigated after punting De Vries into the gravel at turn one. The American even apologised to the Dutch driver for his role in it.
Vasseur is hoping at the very minimum that they get the opportunity to talk about it with the stewards as only one of the incidents resulted in a penalty.
“We hope at least to have an open discussion with them (the stewards), and to, also, for the good of the sport, to avoid having this kind of decision where you have (three) cases on the same corner and not the same decision,” said the Frenchman.
“I don’t want to blame someone on a race incident. I’m doing this job for 33 years, and when you have crash on track you have two versions always with different feedback and different outcome.
“We had the feeling that the Ocon and Gasly situation was treated a bit differently.”
Photo credit: Scuderia Ferrari
