Sainz pushes FIA for a rethink — but only on the penalty points
Carlos Sainz isn’t trying to rewrite the Dutch Grand Prix. He just wants his licence cleaned up.
Williams has lodged a right of review over the Zandvoort collision that earned Sainz a 10-second time penalty and two penalty points, with the Spaniard making it clear his objective is narrow: scrub the points and move on.
The clash with Liam Lawson came at the Turn 1 restart after a Safety Car. Sainz attacked around the outside, Lawson held firm with the apex advantage defined in the guidelines, and the pair touched. The stewards judged Sainz “wholly or predominantly to blame,” a call that dropped him down the order and put two black marks on his Super Licence.
Sainz was livid in the aftermath, branding the sanction “ridiculous” and later suggesting the panel themselves acknowledged in private that the decision “probably wasn’t the best.” He’s not opening that can publicly while the process is active, but the message from Monza was plain enough: the 10 seconds are gone; the points shouldn’t stand.
“At the moment we can’t really discuss it because it’s under investigation,” Sainz told reporters. “But it was a good conversation in the drivers’ briefing. No one’s going to give me back the 10 seconds, that’s done. The focus is avoiding this kind of thing in the future — and, for me, taking those two penalty points off because I don’t deserve them.”
Williams confirmed the filing to the FIA, saying the team is seeking clarity on how such fights should be judged going forward and is “hopeful of a positive outcome.” Translation: they want the stewards to re-examine whether Sainz’s move at Tarzan merited licence points at all, even if the race result remains historical fact.
That approach tracks with the driver’s own stance. Sainz isn’t chasing a retroactive podium; he’s trying to keep headroom in the penalty-points system. Twelve points in any rolling 12-month window means an automatic race ban, and while he’s only on four, drivers treat those tallies like a tightrope. You don’t want to be thinking about a licence balance every time you send it around the outside.
Right of review cases aren’t simple petitions. Teams must present a new, significant, and relevant element that wasn’t available to the stewards at the time. If the FIA deems the submission admissible, the original panel (or a reconvened group) hears it again with the fresh evidence on the table. Sometimes that ends in a tweak to the wording or a reconsideration of the severity; sometimes nothing changes.
What might Williams have that’s “new”? Expect the usual cocktail: fresh telemetry overlays, alternative camera angles, and — crucially — comparative precedents from similar lap-one or restart scrapes at Turn 1. The argument likely hinges on proportionality. Was this a racing tangle on the margin that didn’t warrant licence points? Or was Sainz’s move enough of a lunge to justify both a time hit and a mark against his record?
Strip the emotion out of Zandvoort and you can still see both sides. Sainz had the momentum and a lane; Lawson had the apex and the right to tighten. A few inches either way and it’s a hard-but-fair exchange we forget by Tuesday. Instead, it’s turned into a talking point that’s now headed back through the system.
Sainz, for his part, says he’s parked the frustration. “Honestly, it’s out of my mind now. I can race and forget that chapter,” he said after qualifying at Monza. That’s the public face, anyway. Privately, the two points are the itch he wants to scratch — not least because they influence how robust he can be the next time a Safety Car restart drops him onto someone’s outside front wing.
The FIA hasn’t set a timetable for the review. These things can move quickly if the admissibility threshold is obvious, or drag into the next race week while everyone combs through data. Either way, the outcome will be watched closely up and down the grid. Not because it transforms a result — it won’t — but because it signals where the line is drawn when a driver dares the outside into Turn 1 and the door starts to close.
In the meantime, Sainz goes back to work with Williams, where the margins have been razor-thin and the appetite for elbows-out racing is part of the project. He didn’t like the call at Zandvoort. He doesn’t expect mercy on the stopwatch. He just wants the licence ledger to reflect what he — and, he says, plenty of peers — saw it as: a racing incident that shouldn’t carry a two-point sting.
