Carlos Sainz name-drops three former F1 drivers as FIA crunch talks arrive

At the customary F1 drivers’ meeting ahead of the Qatar Grand Prix, the racers and governing body the FIA will talk driving standards guidelines, and any changes which are desired. Carlos Sainz has an idea.

Sainz, the director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association (GPDA), has been impressed with the analysis of on-track incidents carried out by Sky F1 duo Karun Chandhok and Anthony Davidson, plus that of F1TV’s Jolyon Palmer. Sainz suspects racing guidelines would not be needed if former drivers such as that trio were doing the judging.

Carlos Sainz points to ex-F1 driver analysts for solution

The F1 driver guidelines exist as a method to provide insight for competitors into how the FIA stewards will police on-track incidents, covering topics such as overtaking and racing conduct.

These guidelines will be put under the microscope ahead of the Qatar GP, with decisions such as Oscar Piastri’s Brazil penalty called out by Sainz, who requested an “urgent” meeting with the FIA.

He got his wish.

“I think first we need to sit together, analyse quite a few of the incidents that I think there’s been quite a lot of division on in opinion, between drivers, FIA stewards. Just different ways to judge different incidents,” said Sainz in a Qatar GP press conference.

“I think this year there’s been quite a bit of confusion regarding a few of them. I think we need to sit together and go through them and analyse them calmly out of a heat of the moment, like we are now on a Thursday before a race, and try to all hopefully come up with a solution, a better solution for the future.

“My personal opinion – and here I’m not talking from GPDA perspective, I’m just talking as Carlos Sainz – is that there is potential to do better. And I think the guidelines themselves have created more problems than solutions to a lot of issues that have happened this year in the ways we judge incidents.

“There’s been barely any room for racing incidents this year. There’s always been either white or black, because we’ve been supported by the guidelines, and the guidelines haven’t allowed racing incidents to be judged as racing incidents, because there was always a tyre in front or behind a mirror, or a tyre in front or behind a front or rear tyre, whatever the guidelines say. I don’t know them by heart.

“For me, it’s been, in that sense, a bit of not successful implementation of those guidelines. But that’s what we need to discuss. That’s what we need to sit together and see if there’s any other solution.”

Sainz will make his case by highlighting the work of three former F1 drivers, who he believes set a standard in their analysis that F1 stewarding should strive to reach.

Karun Chandhok – formerly of Hispania and Lotus – often shares ‘SkyPad’ duties with ex-Mniardi, BAR-Honda and Super Aguri driver Anthony Davidson. As part of this feature of Sky’s Formula 1 coverage, they will review footage of incidents and collisions which happen during a session, and from that analysis, often say whether they agree with what the stewards decided.

Former Renault driver Jolyon Palmer performs similar analysis pieces for Formula 1.

Asked if the F1 drivers really need guidelines, Sainz replied: “Again, I’m going to speak as Carlos Sainz, not as GPDA here. I’m going to give you as honest as possible answer.

“Recently, after the races, I’ve seen some analysis done of quite a lot of the incidents. I think there was on some of them, Karun Chandhok, in some of them, Jolyon Palmer, some of them, I think, was Anthony Davidson.

“And every time I see this analysis that they do and the verdict that they give from racing drivers that have been recently racing, I think they do a very good analysis, and they put the blame correctly, most of the time, on who actually has the blame, or if it’s actually just a racing incident.

“My future ideal is no guidelines and people that are able to judge these sort of incidents as well as these three people that I just mentioned do after the races.

“Again, this is just my opinion, but I’m quite impressed at the job some of the broadcasters do after a race with this in-depth analysis of each incident, and how they apply blame or no blame, into certain scenarios. And I think that’s a level of analysis and a level of stewardness, if you want to call it that way, that I think is very high level.

“Probably it doesn’t mean that we will agree 100 per cent on the cases of what these three people, three ex-drivers, give, but I think they are, 90 per cent, let’s say, correct. And if I would have to go and see Formula 1 in the future, and the stewarding level, this is more or less a level that I would appreciate.”

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He added: “I do think there’s older generation people that do a very good job with the stewarding. I don’t want to name any names, but I don’t want to be personal with anyone, but I do think there’s people out there doing a very decent job.

“The only thing I say, and I insist that I don’t want to get into too much of analysis here, is that when I hear these people, these ex-racing drivers, doing analysis, they speak a lot of sense. When I read and I say, ‘[If] we would have two or three of these judging our racing incidents or our penalties, I think most of the time, these people wouldn’t need guidelines.’

“They would be very honest and very accurate, I think, in taking some of the conclusions that we would need them to take. So, I put it out there as an idea.

“Obviously nowadays, to come to 24 races, probably also you need a fixed salary. You need the job to be relatively important because it takes a lot of time out of your life. So we need to look at how to organise that. But again, I don’t want to get into too much of analysis here.

“And I just want to say that when I take time to see those incidents back maybe two days, when I go back home, and it comes up in social media, these people making the analysis, I’m like, ‘I see it exactly the same way’, and I think most of the drivers see it in a very similar way.”

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