‘Unacceptable’ – Carlos Sainz calls for ‘urgent’ FIA meeting after Oscar Piastri penalty

Williams star Carlos Sainz has called for an “urgent” meeting between the F1 drivers and the FIA after what he described as an “unacceptable” penalty for McLaren’s Oscar Piastri in Brazil.

Piastri was hit with a 10-second penalty in Sao Paulo earlier this month having been found to have caused a collision with Andrea Kimi Antonelli, the Mercedes driver, at Turn 1 at the restart.

Carlos Sainz critical of FIA handling of Oscar Piastri incident: ‘Unacceptable’

The contact between the pair saw Antonelli collide with Charles Leclerc, putting the Ferrari driver out of the race.

The penalty handed to Piastri, who finished a distant fifth in Brazil, could prove to be decisive in the F1 2025 title race.

Piastri trails McLaren teammate and championship rival Lando Norris by 24 points entering the final three races of the season in Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

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Sainz’s Williams team successfully appealed against the punishment the Spaniard copped for a collision with Liam Lawson at the Dutch Grand Prix, earlier this season, with two penalty points wiped from his disciplinary record.

With Oliver Bearman handed a penalty for colliding with Sainz in Italy, and Sainz himself being penalised for contact with Antonelli in the United States last month, the Williams driver has called for a rethink on how penalties are applied.

Speaking ahead of this weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix, Sainz – who became a director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association in February – said: “I think we need urgently a catch up to try and solve it.

“Because for me, the fact that Oscar got a penalty there in Brazil is unacceptable, honestly, for the category that we are in and being the pinnacle of motorsport.

“I’m not going to explain why. I think all you guys saw what happened.

“I think everyone that’s seen racing knows that is not Oscar’s fault at all. And everyone that’s really raced a race car knows he could have done nothing to avoid an accident there and he got away with a 10-second penalty.

“For me, it’s something that I don’t understand. I didn’t understand my Zandvoort penalty.

“I didn’t understand why Ollie got a penalty when we both collided at Monza. He was not deserving of that penalty and I told him straight after the race.

“I didn’t understand how I got a 10-second [penalty] in Austin. And then the Brazil situation.

“So there’s been not one, but multiple incidents this year, that for me are far from where the sport should be.”

A meeting is expected to take place between the drivers and the FIA in Qatar, where the infamous Driving Standards Guidelines were updated last season in response to a series of incidents between Norris and Max Verstappen.

The updated guidelines were made publicly available ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix in June.

Asked if the stewards are mistaken to treat the guidelines as definitive rules, Sainz replied: “It’s difficult to judge because it could go both ways.

“You could criticise the way the guidelines are written and we ask the stewards to obviously apply those guidelines as firmly as possible. The stewards are just doing their job.

“Or are the guidelines guidelines and the stewards should take them as guidelines and not as black or white?

“It could go both ways. I’m not sure what what the solution is.

“I think it needs to be discussed among all of us, but it is very clear for me that after what I saw in Brazil, something is not quite working if we had to judge that as a 10-second penalty for the guy that had no fault or for anything that he did.”

Sainz conceded that the current guidelines have reduced the chance of collisions being judged as racing incidents, pointing to lockups under braking as a scenario commonly misinterpreted by the stewards.

He said of racing incidents: “Less likely.

“I think with the way the rules are written, there’s always going to be someone at fault.

“I think it’s less likely to have a racing incident with the way that things are written, because there’s always one exact scenario that happens, which is depending on where the car is and what happens.

“And another thing that I struggle with is lockups. Whenever we see a lockup, I think a steward immediately interprets that as out of control.

“And a lockup not always means out of control. You can lockup and still make the apex.

“I locked up in Austin in reaction to a move that Kimi did and Oscar reacts in locks up in Brazil in reaction too.

“So it’s not like we were out of control and we were going to miss the apex, crash and create a massive accident.

“So I think the way those lockups are interpreted in terms of out of control, I think it’s also something that needs to be reviewed.”

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Asked if it would be better if the guidelines were dropped entirely, Sainz highlighted permanent stewards as a potential alternative solution, allowing the drivers to form an “understanding” with those in the stewards’ room.

He said: “I honestly think – it’s just me now maybe speaking too much, I shouldn’t be, I know – with good stewarding, who truly understand racing really well, and consistent stewarding through a year, we would develop an understanding among us.

“You almost would need no ‘guard’ and you would know when it’s your fault. They would know when it’s someone’s fault.

“But this is more my perception of things.

“I think if we had three fixed guys, the same way that we have a fixed race director, and we know the way they’ve been applying penalties for years, and we create that muscle memory, or that memory of how they tend to rate penalties or no penalties, I honestly think even without guidelines, we know when it’s someone’s fault or not or when it’s a simple racing incident.”

Put to him that most drivers’ idea of consistent stewarding is that their opponent should always get a penalty instead, Sainz laughed: “I agree!

“That’s why it’s not easy. It’s not easy and I don’t have the perfect solution. I have that in my head as a possibility.

“We always seems towards rating all of the incidents for a cumulative of years or races.

“But that’s the one thing we have never tried that I would potentially try, but that’s it.”

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