Motorsports

RaceFans Round-up: Stewards should have listened to Sainz

Sportem
Sportem
6 Min Read

In the round-up: Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur is frustrated his driver Carlos Sainz Jnr wasn’t allowed to speak to the stewards before his Australian Grand Prix penalty was issued.

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In brief

Stewards should have listened to Sainz – Vasseur

Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur said the Australian Grand Prix stewards should have heard from Sainz before penalising his driver for his collision with Fernando Alonso on Sunday. Vasseur pointed out the stewards had reversed a decision which went against Alonso at the previous round.

“Carlos had a very good recovery after the unlucky pit stop, just before the red flag, and to get penalised like this at the end it’s very harsh,” Vasseur told Channel 4 on Sunday. “For sure you are emotional in this kind of situation because you are not far away of the podium, you are P4 coming from nowhere when we all the others get the pit stop for free. He did a mega good job.

“Now, I think that you can discuss hours about the penalty, if it’s harsh or not. For sure that depending of your position, your team and so on the analysis will be different.

“But I think what is a shame for me is that considering that it was not impacting the podium, at least the stewards, they could have listened to them and to have a look on the data. And I think this is a is a bit of a shame. Last week we changed the regulation two times in 10 minutes about the pit stop for Alonso and we could do the same today, at least to discuss.”

Vasseur confirmed Ferrari would not appeal against the decision, but questioned why it had been taken so quickly. “They took 30 laps before to decide if Alonso was into the box or not and today took five seconds.”

Magnussen didn’t realised he’d hit wall

Kevin Magnussen didn’t realise he’d hit the wall at turn two when he suffered the damage which ended his race and triggered the controversial final standing restart in Melbourne.

“I brushed the wall at the exit of turn two and the rim broke, the tyre came off and I had to stop,” he said. “I didn’t even feel it so it definitely wasn’t something that felt big in the car, but it was enough to crack the rim and take the tyre off.”

Broadcaster “apologises” to Kirkwood

IndyCar driver Kyle Kirkwood says he received an apology from the series broadcaster NBC after its commentary team blamed him for a collision in the pit lane with Alexander Rossi. The stewards penalised the McLaren driver rather than Kirdwood for the contact.

“Pretty disappointing how much hate mail I’ve received for the pit lane incident yesterday,” he said in a post on social media. “I’d like to clarify that I was fully 100% within pit lane protocol and the NBC IndyCar broadcast team has kindly apologised for making me out to be the bad guy.”

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