Ferrari have confirmed they may ask the stewards of the Australian Grand Prix to rethink and, they hope, overturn the penalty which value Carlos Sainz Jnr fourth place within the race.

The FIA discovered on Thursday final week the staff has utilized for a assessment of the penalty Sainz acquired for his collision with Fernando Alonso after the standing restart on lap 57 of the race.

Ferrari is profiting from the identical ‘proper of assessment’ process which Alonso’s staff used to cancel a penalty he had been given within the earlier spherical. However that was one in every of few events in current historical past by which a staff has efficiently used the appropriate of assessment to reverse a call by the stewards.

As Ferrari is aware of, persuading the stewards to overturn a penalty determination just isn’t simple. They tried to cancel the five-second time penalty which value Sebastian Vettel victory within the 2019 Canadian Grand Prix, They tried to cancel“>however failed. The yr earlier than Williams additionally tried to impress a assessment of incidents which occured throughout the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, to no avail.

Aston Martin acquired Alonso’s Jeddah penalty cancelledThere have been 4 unsuccessful assessment bids in 2021 alone, involving Mercedes on the Brazilian Grand Prix, Aston Martin on the Hungarian Grand Prix, Purple Bull on the British Grand Prix and Alfa Romeo on the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

The examples of profitable instances are far fewer. Along with Aston Martin, Purple Bull gained a listening to which led to Lewis Hamilton being penalised on the 2020 Austrian Grand Prix. Haas additionally gained a proper of assessment following the US Grand Prix final yr, although it was subsequently overturned following an enchantment by rivals Alpine.

On sheer weight of numbers, Ferrari’s probabilities don’t look good. However do the substance of the instances give the staff and its supporters grounds to be optimistic that Sainz could get his fourth place again?

Ferrari should persuade the stewards of two factors in an effort to win their case. First, they need to present there’s a important and related new piece of proof which the stewards ought to think about. Second, that proof should persuade the stewards to overturn the penalty.

Ferrari didn’t get Vettel’s 2019 penalty reversedMany bids for enchantment have fallen on the first hurdle, together with Ferrari’s 2019 effort. The staff submitted a substantial quantity of data which the stewards famous was not new.

Ferrari additionally supplied a video evaluation of the incident in query by former F1 driver-turned Sky tv presenter Karun Chandhok. The stewards rejected this as “not important and related as this can be a private opinion by a 3rd occasion.” Hamilton, who gained the win as a consequence of Vettel’s penalty, later admitted he turned “relaxed” in regards to the menace to his victory after he discovered Ferrari’s case rested partly on Chandhok’s evaluation of it. They absolutely is not going to make the identical mistake once more.

New footage of an incident could present priceless new perception. In 2020 Purple Bull used a 360-degree video from Hamilton’s automotive which was not accessible to the stewards after they cleared him of failing to sluggish underneath yellow flags to show he deserved a penalty. Nonetheless discovering new video alone is not any assure of success, as Mercedes found after they requested a assessment of a call to not penalise Verstappen within the 2021 Brazilian Grand Prix.

Ballot: Three crashes, one penalty: Did the Melbourne stewards get these calls proper?Ferrari can in all probability neglect about utilizing extra artistic technique of producing new ‘proof’. Earlier within the bitter 2021 title struggle Purple Bull took the extraordinary step of utilizing take a look at driver Alexander Albon to recreate Hamilton’s driving line via Copse at Silverstone in an try to extend his penalty for colliding with Verstappen within the nook. The stewards rendered Albon’s labours nugatory by noting new proof have to be “‘found’ (versus created).”

It stays to be seen what new, related and important proof Ferrari could have found which they consider will immediate the stewards to rethink Sainz’s penalty. It’s laborious to think about what facet of the collision was missed within the many replays of the contact seen on the time.

Ferrari have been particularly annoyed the stewards didn’t give them a possibility to place ahead their model of occasions earlier than penalising Sainz. The driving force was distraught at his penalty, pleading together with his staff to talk with them. Vasseur echoed this grievance afterwards. “The largest frustration was – and also you heard it on the radio – to not have hearings,” he mentioned.

The FIA handed Sainz’s penalty down at 6:52pm, whereas the race was nonetheless underneath pink flag and awaiting the ultimate restart. A choice on one other collision which occurred at virtually the identical time, involving AlphaTauri drivers Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon, took over three-and-a-half hours longer to look. “On this case, I feel it might have made sense contemplating that the race was over, it was not affecting the rostrum, to have the listening to as Gasly and Ocon had,” Vasseur famous.

Others weren’t investigated for Melbourne incidentsFerrari might also search to attract consideration to the very fact one other incident occured on the similar time which wasn’t even investigated by the stewards. Logan Sargeant bumped into Nyck de Vries, ending the race for each drivers.

One uncommon facet of Sainz’s collision with Alonso is it was successfully rendered meaningless by the stewards’ subsequent determination to vary the working order of the race. Alonso fell to the again of the sector after Sainz knocked him right into a barrier, however was restored to 3rd place when the stewards took the hotly-debated determination to revert to the working order from earlier than the restart and their collision. Ferrari could make to want the case that because the foul was cancelled out, the penalty must be too.

However whereas there are a lot of instances Ferrari could wish to make, the necessity to provide proof units a excessive bar for them to take action. The staff is clearly desirous to ‘have its day on courtroom’ over the Sainz penalty, and will have good arguments to make if it does, however whether or not they get that far is one other matter completely.

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