The FIA have dismissed Ferrari and Carlos Sainz’s appeal to his penalty he received in the Australian Grand Prix.
During my last blog post, I wrote about hoe Ferrari and Sainz submitted an official appeal to the FIA over the five second time penalty given to Sainz during the last lap of the race. The five second time penalty caused Sainz to drop from fourth place to twelfth and out of the points that race weekend.
Carlos Sainz. Source.
The hearing took place Tuesday morning and the FIA stated that “There is no significant and relevant new element which was unavailable to the parties seeking the review at the time of the decision concerned. The Petition is therefore dismissed.”
The FIA went on to explain further that “We considered the fact that this collision took place at the first corner on the first lap of the restart, when, by convention, the Stewards would typically take a more lenient view of incidents. However, we decided that notwithstanding that it was the equivalent of a first lap incident, we considered that there was sufficient gap for SAI to take steps to avoid the collision and failed to do so. We therefore imposed a 5-second time penalty.”
Ferrari’s other data they provided to the stewards which included telemetry data from Sainz’s car and statements given by both drivers involved in the accident, Sainz and Fernando Alonso. Driver statements have worked before to sway the stewards decisions on penalties, most notably with Force India Formula 1 team overturning a penalty.
The FIA said they did not reconsider because the decision was made during the race and that it was “unnecessary” to hear statements from the drivers. The FIA also said that the new car data only confirmed their decision and did not help their case.
The PR problem on the Ferrari side is that there is actually no problem for them, since after the decision was made Ferrari immediately put out a statement that they acknowledged the FIA’s decision and that they are disappointed in the decision but they are moving forward. Ferrari also made a very god notable comment that is calling out the FIA while not calling them out. A part of their statement is “We are now looking forward to entering broader discussions with the FIA, F1, and all the Teams, with the aim of further improving the policing of our sport, in order to ensure the highest level of fairness and consistency that our sport deserves.”
Ferrari is hinting that they and a lot of the teams are frustrated with the FIA’s constant rule changing and bending for different situations and not created a defined set of rules. Fans have called out the unfairness of the FIA numerous times before, and now this is a notable time that one of the most popular teams is making a similar statement that they are also frustrated and ready for a change. It will be interesting to see if the FIA make a statement responding to Ferrari or if they ignore their comments, only time will tell.