Sainz calls for consistency after near-miss reprimand

The Toro Rosso driver was handed his punishment after stewards found him at fault for nearly causing a collision with the fast-approaching Kevin Magnussen in FP2 – where there had been a closing speed of 200 km/h.

Sainz had been driving slowly to prepare for a quick lap, and his team had mistakenly told him that his Haas rival was further back than he was.

Magnussen subsequently said that he ‘nearly hit’ the Toro Rosso before taking evasive action, and Sainz later apologised. The stewards ruled that “this was a potentially dangerous situation.”

With incidents at the final chicane in Montreal very common, and there being an increased likelihood of slow out laps in qualifying thanks to the quirks of Pirelli’s tyre preparation, there is a high chance of more trouble over the rest of the Canadian Grand Prix weekend.

As the result of that, F1 drivers discussed how best to avoid the potential for further incidents over the rest of the weekend during their Friday night briefing with the FIA.

But with no agreement on a set procedure, Sainz said he hoped that race stewards treated all drivers the same if there were further moments.

“It is a very common incident to have here in Canada,” Sainz said when asked by Motorsport.com about the matter. 

“We were talking about it in the drivers’ meeting to try to find a solution to that, but there is no solution really. Or let’s say, we were not agreeing altogether on a solution.

“But what you cannot do is put some penalties on some people and not others. So hopefully for tomorrow, the stewards’ keep a simple approach to it and treat everyone the same.”

Communication mix-up

Speaking about the Magnussen incident in more detail, Sainz said that matters had not been helped by wrong information from his team and the lack of visibility from F1 car mirrors.

“I went to apologise to him,” said Sainz. “I was about to start a timed lap and I thought he was on a cool down lap but he was on a push lap, so it was just a misunderstanding. I didn’t see him at all.

“My engineer came on and said that Kevin was entering the pits now, and it was actually that he had missed the corner. But my team thought he was on an in-lap rather than a push lap, which is why they didn’t tell me about him. And with this year’s mirrors I didn’t really see him.”