Williams’s success in challenging Carlos Sainz Jnr’s Dutch Grand Prix penalty is likely to encourage others to attempt the same, according to Alan Permane of rivals Racing Bulls.
Two weeks after the race, following a request for a review by Williams, the stewards reversed their decision to penalise Sainz for a collision with Liam Lawson at Zandvoort. Although his 10-second time penalty could not be cancelled, as he had already served it, the stewards rescinded the two penalty points they originally issued.
Racing Bulls team principal Permane, who previously accused Sainz of costing Lawson fifth place by “crashing into” him, said the ruling will encourage other teams to challenge decisions which go against them. “I guess it will open the door to more challenges, I think,” he said.
“But for a Right to Review, you need to supply some new, significant, and relevant evidence. And I think one of the things they accepted was that Carlos didn’t have a chance to talk.
“So his testimony was new evidence. If you make a decision in the race, you’re automatically going to have that as a chance to challenge it.”
Sainz’s testimony was one of three new pieces of evidence offered by Williams, which also include new onboard footage from Lawson’s car. While the stewards accepted the video as evidence, in their ruling the stewards noted Sainz’s testimony was not necessarily significant and “does not materially add to an evaluation of the incident by reference to all of the video evidence.”
However Permane said he welcomed the stewards’ reinterpretation of the collision as a racing incident.
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“I think what we want to see, what everyone wants to see, is racing: close racing and overtaking. Of course we were on the wrong end of it, but we don’t want cars to have to follow each other and be bound by very rigid things.
“So if it does just open that up a little bit and mean that Carlos could be alongside [Lawson] there, I think everyone will welcome that. We don’t want cars driving into each other, but we also don’t want a procession, do we?”
However McLaren team principal Andrea Stella, whose team brought an unsuccessful Right of Review request at the United States Grand Prix last year, said the process for challenging decisions is still too difficult.
“In general, I’m in favour of making the possibility to reopen a case a little easier,” he said. “Then, as soon as we state this principle, the way this is actually translated in the real world becomes quite technical.
“But the message which I can give from a team principal point of view is that having an easier way to reconsider cases and rectify decisions is something we should definitely make sure is possible. Then I would leave to the experts the technicalities as to how you make this happen. But at the moment — or up until the last couple of cases — the threshold was too high for acceptance.”
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