Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz and the Maranello team highlighted the need for the FIA and Formula 1 to take key decisions more quickly after the “mess” around the order for Red Bull Mexican driver Sergio Perez to give third place back to Carlos before the 2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix restart at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit.
The Ferrari driver crossed the safety line at the pit exit fractionally ahead of the RB18 of Sergio Perez, as the Mexican driver had pitted before the caution so was passing on the racetrack with greater momentum rather than emerging from the pits like the F1-75 of Carlos. However, this allowed Sergio Perez to pass Carlos Sainz while the Spanish driver was still getting up to speed in the pit exit and was running third on the road under the safety car.
Carlos Sainz and the Italian side immediately noticed the situation and pointed out that Red Bull should give the place back, while even Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner confirmed his team was aware that was the right decision in order to avoid a penalty. But they were not in a hurry to give the position back and it took some laps for the order from race control to come through, which meant that Carlos Sainz only repassed Sergio Perez as the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was restarted once the Safety Car left the track. This did not give the Ferrari driver the possibility of attempting an overtaking move on Max Verstappen, who was in second place at that stage of the race. Carlos Sainz explained that it would have been better for both of them for the exchange to have been made ahead of the restart in Jeddah.
“The safety car line with Checo, this is our number one priority now that we need to talk about with the FIA,” he said, “because basically Checo lost the opportunity to fight with me on the restart, and I lost the opportunity to fight with Max [Verstappen] for [Perez] not giving up the position during the safety car. We had a lot of laps to do it. The FIA didn’t allow us and I think for the sake of racing and the sake of Formula 1, these kind of things need to happen quicker and they need to happen more efficiently.” – he added.
Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto also discussed the matter, pointing out that it was simply an example of a straightforward call that could have been actioned much faster: “The communication is that we went on the radio with the race director as soon as possible, told him to check on the safety car line because we believe that we were ahead a couple of tenths. It took a bit too long, I believe from them to decide and to give that to the stewards and finally they took the decision when the safety car was coming in, and it was too late before the restart. So it’s not a blame, but I think that those types of decisions we need to speed up because it was obvious and straightforward and I think it could have been done differently. It would have been important to do it differently. It would have been a lot more fair and equitable to swap the position before the restart, because that was the right position to have, and for the battle at the restart as well.” – he continued.
Christian Horner said Red Bull also “checked with race control” because “we felt that we were potentially slightly behind” at the safety car line. Sergio Perez had no objections at all to the place swap, saying just “the team told me to give it back so I gave it back straight after the safety car” and calling the FIA’s decision “fair enough”.
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However, Carlos Sainz also highlighted the fact that taking such a call only after the race restart could have led to other problems:
“I knew that Checo was going to give me a position quickly and he couldn’t fight me because he was going to give me a position back so in the end, we created a mess that for me is unnecessary, given the fact that we did six laps behind the safety car and there were millions of opportunities for Checo to let me by and have a good fight at the restart. If I would have got passed by [George] Russell for example, what would we have done and would Checo have had to let by Russell and me, which would have been tremendously unfair for him too? Or then Checo doesn’t give me back the position because there’s Russell in between me and him and it’s tremendously unfair for me? So I don’t know, it’s just these kind of things that as a sport we need to keep getting better at because I think we need to simplify things and just make it quicker and easier for everyone to understand and even for the drivers to go racing with a much clearer mind.” – the Ferrari driver concluded.
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