Ferrari’s request for a review of the penalty imposed on Carlos Sainz at the end of the Australian Grand Prix will be heard on 18 April.
The Spaniard’s five-second penalty for colliding with Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin dropped him from fourth to 12th.
The hearing will first assess whether there is significant, new and relevant evidence that was not considered by the stewards in Melbourne.
Only if that is deemed the case will the incident be reviewed by officials.
If the penalty is reassessed, there could be a number of different outcomes – the penalty could remain unchanged, change to a different penalty or be overturned.
Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur said last week he was concerned that two other incidents at the same restart – the penultimate one in a race defined by incidents and stoppages – did not lead to penalties.
The Frenchman highlighted the crash between the two Alpine drivers Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon, which led to the retirement of both cars, and which was deemed a racing incident, as well as Williams driver Logan Sargeant ramming Alpha Tauri’s Nyck De Vries, which was not investigated by stewards on the day.
Vasseur and Sainz were both frustrated that stewards decided on the penalty almost instantaneously without hearing from the drivers involved. Alonso himself said he felt the decision was “harsh”.
Sainz tipped Alonso into a spin that dropped the two-time champion from third to the back of the field.
The Aston Martin driver was reinstated in third place for the last restart because he was able to rejoin the race and officials deemed that not enough distance had been covered after that restart to designate a different order.
Vasseur said in a news conference last week: “The process is first they will have a look on the petition to see if they can reopen the case and then we will have a second hearing a bit later about the decision itself.
“What we can expect is to at least have an open discussions with them and for the good of the sport to avoid to have this kind of decision where you have three cases on the same corner and not the same decision.
“The biggest frustration was from Carlos – and you heard it on the radio – was to not have the hearings, because the case was very special and in this case it would have made sense because the race was over and it was not affecting the podium.”
He pointed out that the Gasly-Ocon incident was reviewed by stewards after the race including taking statements from both drivers.
