FIA denies Ferrari’s right of review

Carlos Sainz greeting the fans at the Australian Grand Prix (Image: Getty Images)

The Australian Grand Prix was a chaotic, intense rollercoaster with numerous incidents occurring throughout the grid. One of these incidents involved Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz who hit Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso after the second red flag restart. 

Sainz hit the rear wheel of his fellow countryman which caused Alonso to lose eight positions. This was later given back as the FIA ruled that all cars would return to the order from the standing start. Sainz was penalised and given a five-second penalty for the collision. After the race, Ferrari requested a right of review for the incident as they believed Sainz did not deserve to be penalised for the accident. 

Ferrari presented the FIA with numerous amounts of evidence:

• Telemetry data from Sainz.

• A witness statement from Sainz.

• Recordings of statements from other drivers, including Alonso.

The FIA came to a decision surrounding Ferrari’s right of review on the 18th of April. They released a statement saying that they have denied the right of review and Ferrari’s weekend was pointless as both drivers did not finish in the points; Charles Leclerc retired from an incident on lap one and Sainz went from fourth to 12th as a result of the penalty.

The steward’s statement states: “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.”