Grid penalty for Sainz in Russia

The 2017 Formula One World Championship seasons has seen a concerted effort by the race stewards to hand out fewer penalties.

Formula One had reached a stage where any contact between drivers and sometimes when contact hadn’t actually been made, in relation to Max Verstappen’s defensive tactics, had seen each incident put under investigation.

The race stewards then have to study the footage and lay blame on a driver, who would invariably receive a time penalty or grid penalty.

This season however the stewards are trying to be much more lenient, but even under the new guidelines they couldn’t ignore the Bahrain collision between Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz and Williams racer Lance Stroll.

Sainz had just pitted and fed back onto the track on the inside of turn one, Stroll was on the outside, but much further down the track than Sainz.

Stroll took his normal line and Sainz crashed straight into him.

‘The Stewards heard from Carlos Sainz, the driver of car 55, Lance Stroll, the driver of car 18 and the team representatives, reviewed the video evidence which showed that car 18 was on the normal racing line, car 55 left the pitlane and made a very optimistic attempt to pass car 18 into the corner,’ the stewards said as quoted by motorsport.com.

‘The Stewards decided that the driver of car 55 was predominately to blame for causing the collision in violation of Article 27.4 of the FIA Formula One Sporting Regulations.

Sainz was handed a three-place grid penalty for the Russian Grand Prix and two penalty points.