FIA have denied Ferrari a right of review concerning Carlos Sainz’s penalty at 2023 Australian Grand Prix.
Sainz had been running fourth on Lap 57 when he spun Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso at Turn One on a standing restart, after the race had been red flagged for a second time on Lap 55 due to Haas’ Kevin Magnussen suffering a rear-right suspension failure a lap earlier.
Stewards consequently handed Sainz a five-second time penalty but to complete the final lap of the 58-lap race under the Safety Car, which meant that Sainz dropped from fourth at the line to 12th in the official classification.
Ferrari however disagreed with the penalty and opted to appeal for a petition of right of review which led to Team Principal, Frederic Vasseur along with Laurent Mekies plus Sainz meeting with stewards in a private meeting.
Stewards eventually determined that the petition was dismissed due to ‘no significant and relevant new element which was unavailable to the parties seeking the review at the time of the decision concerned.’
Expanding upon their decision, the stewards iterated that Sainz’s collision with Alonso was within the race and that the Spaniard ‘was wholly to blame for the collision.’
Stewards also added that they had considered ‘a more lenient view’ due to being on the first lap of the second standing restart, which conventionally doesn’t necessiate hard penalties but felt that it ‘was the equivalent of a first lap incident,’ outside of that context.
They also believed that Sainz could of taken action to avoid the collision hence the decision to impose the 5s time penalty.
Ferrari’s petition insisted that there were three ‘new significant and relevant elements,’ compromised of Sainz’s telemetary data plus witness statement by the Spaniard and other drivers, whilst iterating ‘that there is precedent’ for these cases to be considered ‘new significant and relevant elements.’
Ferrari even referenced Force India’s previous appeal for a right of review as part of precedence within F1’s history, in terms of ‘verbal testimony of a driver and relevant telementary’ amounting to ‘siginificant and relevant new element.’
FIA stewards however hit back by describing that case as ‘quite different’ due to it having involved a post-race hearing into an incident, where the person at fault wasn’t obvious with the driver unable to attend and have his say due to being sent to hospital for medical checks.
Stewards also determined that Sainz’s telemetry isn’t ‘significant’ or ‘relevant’ due having had access to the data at time of decision, despite Sainz arguing that he had braked harder but was unable to ‘stop the car because of cold tyres.’
Sainz’s written witness statement was also dismissed because stewards stated that if his opinion was warranted, they would of launched a post-race investigation but decided that they had the evidence to issue the penalty without his input.
Stewards also deemed statements by other drivers as also ‘not new significant and relevant’ to the matter because they didn’t offer any new viewpoints on the incidents.
Sainz will now officially be classified 12th in the classification with no changes to the classified finishing order, whilst Ferrari issued a statement on Twitter expressing how ‘naturally disappointed’ they’re at the FIA’s decision.
Statement from Scuderia Ferrari ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/LFEgGZkzRB
— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) April 18, 2023
Well, that’s quite unfortunate