Formula 1 steward Derek Warwick admits it “felt wrong” having to hand Carlos Sainz a 10-place grid penalty at the Las Vegas Grand Prix for circumstances outside his control.
The first practice hour at the Las Vegas Strip Circuit last month was abandoned after Sainz ran over a water valve cover and sustained extensive damage to his Ferrari.
With his power unit requiring a change, Ferrari asked the FIA for dispensation for the use of a third energy store outside of Sainz’s penalty-free allowance for the campaign.
Despite acknowledging the “highly unusual and unfortunate circumstances”, the stewards dismissed Ferrari’s appeal, ultimately costing Sainz a front-row start.
An exasperated Sainz declared he was “upset” with the entire sport for the decision, while Ferrari Team Principal Frederic Vasseur branded the whole episode “unacceptable”.
Elsewhere, Max Verstappen, who benefitted from Sainz’s grid drop that weekend, sympathised with the Spaniard, insisting “the rules have to change” for such situations.
Warwick, who was part of the steward’s panel that weekend, concedes that the rules had to be applied as they’re defined despite acknowledging the outcome was unsavoury.
“It’s a difficult job for a steward, the same as a referee, and we’ve got to be impartial, we’ve got to be strict and we’ve got to be hard sometimes even when it hurts us,” he told Reuters.
“The penalty we had to give Sainz in Vegas, it felt wrong, it was wrong, we worked very hard for it not to happen but they’re the rules.”
The International Sporting Code contains 11 references to force majeure for an “unpredictable, unpreventable and external event”, but none of those relate to penalties.
That prompted suggestions that F1 should implement a clause to prevent a repeat of the incident, but AlphaTauri CEO Peter Bayer revealed teams had previously rejected this.
“Having been on the other side we had plenty of discussion on whether should we have that sort of force majeure clause,” Bayer, formerly of the FIA, revealed to Autosport.
“And, in fact, it was the F1 teams in their drive to perfection and but also their absolute maximised paranoia that they thought that if somebody would be able to trigger force majeure, that person will have a lot of power because a lot of people would probably claim force majeure on many occasions.
“Which is why they said, ‘Let’s not open Pandora’s box’. But having said that, honestly, in this case, if we would have been asked as a team, we would have supported Ferrari. It’s really not their fault.”
Absolute shame that Ferrari was penalised at las vegas for a defect incombing to others. Stewards, fia, las vegas gp organiser are destroying the competition spirit. Only procedures and money interest them. Pure shit.