Up Next
Carlos Sainz labelled the decision to penalise him for a clash with Liam Lawson in the Dutch Grand Prix a “complete joke” and not at the right standard for Formula 1.
Sainz was given a 10-second penalty after Turn 1 contact occurred when Sainz tried to pass Lawson at a restart in the middle of the Zandvoort F1 race.
The Williams driver went to the outside of Lawson into the first corner and hit the right rear of the Racing Bulls car on the exit - which seemed to be prompted by Lawson correcting a small slide after he had looked in his mirror to check where Sainz was.
Sainz criticised Lawson over the radio immediately after the clash, which gave both cars punctures, and was incredulous later on when informed that he, not Lawson, had been given a penalty.
He told Williams he wanted to speak with the stewards post-race, which he reiterated when he conducted his media obligations immediately after the grand prix finished.
“It's a complete joke,” Sainz said of his penalty. “Honestly, I need to go now to the stewards just to get an explanation, to see what is the point of view of the incident.
More from Zandvoort
Winners and losers from F1's 2025 Dutch Grand Prix
How Norris is dealing with major F1 title setback
Has Norris's failure decided the 2025 F1 title fight? Our verdict
Dramatic DNF for Norris as Piastri wins Dutch GP
“Because it's unacceptable, I think it's not the level of stewarding of Formula 1 if they are really considering that to be a 10-second penalty on my behalf.
“I think it's a serious matter now that concerns me as a driver, as a GPDA director, and something that I will make sure I raise.”
Sainz may have risked a stewards summons anyway given his comments could be seen as breaching the FIA clampdown on driver conduct, which includes protecting against abuse of officials - although Sainz technically criticised the quality of the decision, not the stewards themselves.
The definition of misconduct in the FIA’s International Sporting Code includes being “offensive, insulting, coarse, rude or abusive and might reasonably be expected or be perceived to be coarse or rude or to cause offense, humiliation or to be inappropriate”.
Sainz’s cutting remarks underline the scale of his frustration and he suggested it could be a “very concerning” precedent.
“I'm talking as calmly and eloquently and trying to pick my words in the best possible way, without trying to put here a bad word for anyone,” he insisted.
“But what I've seen today and what I've suffered today is something that concerns me, for myself, but for the other drivers and for motorsport in general - if they really think this is how a penalty should be applied to the guy that is around the outside.”
Asked by The Race how drivers go racing now with that penalty in mind, Sainz said: “I don't know that's where I need explanation from them, and I'm hoping to get one.
“I don't know what they're gonna say to be honest.”
A confusing penalty with a worthless 'explanation' - Scott Mitchell-Malm's verdict
Sainz has not held back in his reaction to the stewards’ decision at Zandvoort, and who can blame him?
It’s blatantly obvious from viewing the onboard camera that Lawson looks in his left-side mirror before making a steering correction and drifting into Sainz’s path.
It’s hard to tell if he’s just correcting a slide, or whether that slide was a result of him looking left through a right-hander, but that's what causes the collision.
Given the almost inevitable focus on the car positioning stipulated in the racing guidelines - guidelines, not binding rules - that F1 and the FIA work with, it was always likely that Lawson would avoid punishment given he was the car on the inside and was ahead going into the corner.
The 2025 guidelines make passing on the outside very hard as they basically give the car on the inside freedom to do almost anything and get away with it.
With that in mind, it would be reasonable for the stewards to let that incident pass without punishing Lawson.
To give Sainz a penalty, though, is extremely confusing and disappointing. It’s as though the officials are just ignoring the specifics of what happened and defaulting to ‘well the guidelines say this, so we need to give a penalty to someone’.
Frustratingly it’s no easier to understand from reading the stewards’ report, which is not good enough by any stretch. It is a boilerplate rationale that simply applies racing guidelines to the letter - even though those guidelines are meant to apply discretion.
“Car 55 was attempting to overtake Car 30 on the outside of Turn 1,” the stewards’ report reads.
“The front axle of Car 55 was not ahead of the front axle of Car 30 at the apex of Turn 1.
“Car 55 attempted to stay on the outside of Car 30 and a collision occurred.
“We considered that Car 30 had the right to the corner and therefore Car 55 was wholly or predominantly to blame for the collision.”
If the reason being given for such penalties is going to boil down to simply regurgitating a basic blow-by-blow, rather than actually explain the nuances of the battle, it makes a mockery of the fact that no two incidents are the same - which, ironically, is the argument made by several within the FIA when people complain about a lack of consistency!
Hopefully Sainz succeeds in getting a better answer face-to-face because what’s been said officially is so worthless it’s as though it was produced through ChatGPT.
‘Story of my season’ - Sainz
The incident robbed both drivers of comfortable points finishes as they were running seventh and eighth at the time.
Sainz said it was obvious that Lawson was at fault for the contact, and criticised the Racing Bulls driver who “always seems to prefer to have a bit of contact and risk a DNF or a puncture than to accept having two cars side by side”.
He referenced racing the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Sergio Perez, Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc at different times through Turn 1 at Zandvoort in recent years and said everything about it - “it’s flowing, 180 degrees, super wide, grip on the inside, grip on the outside” - facilitates racing wheel-to-wheel if the car on the inside is cooperative.
“It's a corner that allows two cars to race each other without really having to have any unnecessary contact,” said Sainz.
“But with Liam, it always seems to be very difficult to make that happen.
“Hopefully it will come with more experience to him, because he knows he's putting too many points on the line just for an unnecessary manoeuvre, like he did.”
Sainz’s team-mate Alex Albon was immediately behind them on track when it happened and was one of the primary beneficiaries as he went on to finish fifth in a dramatic race.
“You need to pick your battles and probably Liam in his first years he's deciding to have a bit this approach of crash or no overtake,” said Sainz.
“It is something I'll keep in mind. But yeah, story of my season so far - again, a race where I could have finished P5 where Alex is - 10 points - for something that I cannot understand, still gets out of our hands.”
