Williams has won its bid to wipe Carlos Sainz’s penalty points from his Super Licence over that tetchy Zandvoort tangle with Liam Lawson — though the 10-second time penalty from the Dutch Grand Prix still stands.
After a hearing ahead of Monza involving Williams, Racing Bulls and the original Zandvoort stewards, the panel accepted Williams’ petition for a right of review and reclassified the clash as a racing incident. The two penalty points assigned to Sainz were rescinded accordingly.
There’s no change to the race result. The stewards noted they can’t rewrite a served time penalty or rework the classification after the fact, and in any case, Sainz had a 17-second cushion to the car ahead when the sanction was applied. In other words, the stopwatch never felt it.
It’s a small but meaningful victory for Williams and for Sainz, whose irritation at being pinned for the contact with Lawson was obvious in the aftermath. Penalty points don’t just bruise the ego — they follow a driver around, and enough of them can snowball into something far more serious. Clearing the slate matters.
Williams struck the right conciliatory tone in response, praising the stewards for taking a second look and, between the lines, urging the system to keep evolving. “We’re grateful the incident has been reviewed and recognised as a racing incident,” the team said, while conceding the original call still compromised their race. The message: thanks for the correction, now let’s keep making the process better.
This was one of those classic Zandvoort flashpoints: tight margins, banking, and a split-second read of space that two drivers interpreted differently at full chat. On the day, Sainz — now leading Williams’ charge in 2025 — copped the blame for his brush with Lawson, who continues to bed in at Racing Bulls. The right of review gave Williams a narrow window to present fresh elements and context that weren’t available in-race. It worked.
Don’t expect any grand rewrite of the Dutch GP narrative as a result. The time penalty remains on the books and the points haul doesn’t move. But this does subtly reframe the season story for Sainz: fewer licence marks, a bit less noise around his record, and a small layer of vindication as the European stanza rolls into Monza.
As ever, two things can be true in Formula 1: the officials can stick to the letter of their authority on classification, and a team can still feel wronged by the immediate consequences of a snap decision. This time, at least, the paper trail now reflects what the drivers argued it was all along — hard racing on a narrow track.
Developing story. We’ll update with any response from Racing Bulls or the FIA if and when it lands.
