Sergio Perez, Force India, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, 2018

Perez “surprised” Sainz escaped penalty for turn one clash

2018 Canadian Grand Prix

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Sergio Perez says he doesn’t understand why Carlos Sainz Jnr escaped a penalty for their contact during the Canadian Grand Prix.

The pair tangled when Perez tried to overtake Sainz for ninth place following the Safety Car restart. Perez spun off at turn one and was able to continue but lost seven places.

“I think I had a pretty good restart behind Carlos, I overtook him into turn one, gave enough room, but I do not know what was the reason that I got hit,” said Perez.

“I managed to save the car because it was going to go straight into the wall. Luckily I managed to save it and we kept on.”

He questioned why the stewards didn’t penalise Sainz for the collision.

“I’m surprised that we didn’t see any penalty because I was ahead and I tried to give as much room as possible to make sure both cars go into the corner but it didn’t happen. Afterwards, given how difficult it was to overtake today, our race was over.”

The stewards ruled that “no driver was predominantly to blame for the incident” and that “there was enough room for both cars to avoid the collision.”

FIA race director Charlie Whiting backed the stewards’ decision. “For me, it was just a very small touch<" he said. "Checo [Perez] was coming down the outside, he just turned in, and they just touched. For me, you couldn't blame one driver completely for that." [leaderboard2] [follow]

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Keith Collantine
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36 comments on “Perez “surprised” Sainz escaped penalty for turn one clash”

  1. Hi,

    I must say I was surprised too, although I maybe should look at the images again.
    Generally speaking, passes are difficult, we expect those guys to drive at a very high level: if the pilot passing you gives you the room, you have to fit in. We should always remember that it takes two top-class pilots to offer a fantastic show on the road. Instead of a nice pass, if indeed Sainz messed up, we saw a dull action…
    By the way, maybe it was Sainz’s lucky day: I read on the website that Ocon said he could not attempt a move because Sainz gained some time by cutting a corner: did anyone see this? Did it really happen?

    1. Just wondering what’s with the fad of calling the drivers pilots lately? They’re cars, not planes…

      1. Ah, thanks for letting me know! English’s not my native language so I thought that “pilot” was appropriate. In my native language, “driver” is definitely not appropriate for a racing machine.

        1. Some of them are really chauffeurs

          1. Could call Them sons of rich farther instead

      2. @skipgamer – maybe because they’re so aero-dependent? 🙂 (I’m joking)

      3. @skipgamer as far as I know it comes from a less than ideal Google Translate trend from the German F1 media – which is very active and thus gets quoted a lot.

      4. my first language is spanish and in south america and spain, race car drivers are called “pilotos” which is literally translated: “pilots”.

        1. That’s cool to know! Thanks :)

      5. in italian too racing drivers are colled “pilots”

    2. @js ”I read on the website that Ocon said he could not attempt a move because Sainz gained some time by cutting a corner: did anyone see this? Did it really happen?”
      – No, and I’m not entirely sure whether it really happened or not as it was never shown on the world feed.

      1. Sainz was shown cutting the last chicane once (went in too fast and had to use the runoff). I only saw the onboard so I don’t know if Ocon was attempting an overtake there.

  2. “on the road” = “on track” I guess, sorry.

  3. Neil (@neilosjames)
    11th June 2018, 12:05

    I initially thought Sainz was at fault, but now I’ve watched it again and it was 50/50. Both could have given the other more room… Perez turned in onto a piece of road Sainz was already occupying, but in occupying that piece of road Sainz must have known there was a good chance of a collision.

    1. @neilosjames
      I wouldn’t even say 50:50, I filed it under ‘racing incident’. Pérez turned into Sainz, true, but he had to turn the car sooner or later. Therefore, both drivers were unpleasantly surprised by the collision.
      Same story as Austria 2016, but thankfully without the nonsense penalty this time.

  4. Nevertheless, it was quite a relief to see that Perez didn’t collect anyone – down to both luck and the fact that Perez didn’t feel the need to pin the throttle.

    1. I thought pinning the throttle was the correct way to do it? At least that’s what Grosjean says ;-)

      1. @losd – yeah, quite true, I’m just an armchair racer, Grosjean and Steiner can’t both be wrong 😉

    2. *coughgrosjeancough*

      1. @hugh11 – yep, I was slyly poking fun at Grosjean’s justification with that “didn’t feel the need” comment. 🙂

  5. I was surprised that Sainz escaped penalty for abusing blue flags for Bottas. He seems to have bitten by Verstappen bug for last nights GP.

    1. Chaitanya It was Bottas’ error that he went a bit wide at the exit of turn one after having lapped Sainz.

      1. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
        13th June 2018, 21:34

        @jerejj
        It was indeed Bottas’s error that he did what he did. But Sainz didn’t allow him through earlier for far too long. This may be Chaitanya’s point.

        But it seems they are not that strict on blue flag penalties. Amazingly, in recent years, I think the only 2 drivers to get penalties for blue flags was the Mclaren pair last year. Poor showing from Alonso there given his experience.

        But even on my point about sainz, I just hate the blue flag rules. I think the lapped drivers should have certain section of track that only them are allowed to drive on. And only drive on it when they are getting lapped. This would then hopefully get them out of the leaders way quickly while also still giving the lapped drivers a chance to fight. And they often are still fighting for points.

    2. Sainz is not living up to his promise for quite some time now.

  6. Glad to see Perez saw enough sense to rejoin the track without creating a smoke bomb.

    1. But did ruin MAGs race though..

  7. This was one of those things that was kind of hard to judge based on the world feed, as the whole incident was shown just once and not from any onboard cameras.

    1. In a dull race, they choose not to show some actual drama happening in the race. Everytime there is some action they cut the feed to some other shot.

      1. if you pause at 1:52 in the highlight video you can see how Perez is perfectly on the racing line like everyone else and Sainz is severely forcing his car into the line even though Perez was ahead of him. This is a case of selective penalizing because of who Sainz’s daddy is.

  8. Looks more like Perez did this to himself. Did he expect Sainz to disappear suddenly?

  9. I am glad that so many people have taken a look at this event because it demonstrates something that a number of fans have been observing and writing about for a few years now and that is the fact that the stewards and even the race director rule differently for different drivers and different teams.
    After looking at the incident about a dozen times and stopping the footage repeatedly I believe that the stewards and Charlie got it right. It was no ones fault in that neither driver did anything wrong ,sometimes cars come together and one or both get knocked off course . That is what happened here .
    The salient issue is that this shows that when acting without bias the race officials CAN get the ruling correct . I should not need to applaud an official for doing his job correctly but, it is called for because in F1 so often the correct call is not made. This is not because ( I believe ) the official is incapable of the correct decision but, rather because they feel it is necessary to rule according to what driver or what team is involved . Were Max Verstappen or Lewis Hamilton touched by another driver and knocked off track, as Perez was, there would be a penalty accessed against the other driver because the powers that be in F1 want Verstappen and Hamilton and Mercedes and Red Bull (ESPECIALLY Mercedes ) to succeed . This is sad but, true.
    If you watch other auto race circuits you will see that the officiating is remarkably better and more consistent than in F1 .

    1. I haven’t had a good look at it (race direction didn’t show a bunch of different camera angles either). But from the commentary it appears that Sainz got the last chicane wrong and created a chance for those behind him. Alonso and the Haas were clearly too far behind, but as they go around T2 it is evident they were hoping for some gains, at least Alonso took a way different approach.

      In Pérez’s case, He did go for a gap, but the S/F straight is too short for the time Sainz lost in the chicane, Sainz was going to be compromised, but in no way was a pass possible without an extra 200 meters of a drag race. So in a hypothetical world Pérez should have forced the error not on that corner but work it like how Ricciardo got past Raikkonen at the start.

      I say racing incident, driver A was to eager to score from a minor mistake from driver B. and Driver B got out of shape in the reduced space driver A forced him to, and there was contact.

    2. So do the people commenting. Would it have been VER everyone would be all over him again and clearly he would have 100% blame

  10. Perez has previous at that corner of course.

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