The King of Spain was an episode of Drive to Survive that showed Carlos Sainz and his idol Fernando Alonso battling each other in 2018. Battling next to your idol does feel like a poetic instance. However, the 2023 Australian GP may have given Netflix an evil sequel to the said equation because of the incident between the Spanish duo. Even though Sainz has gone ahead to call his penalty the most incorrect decision in history, he has now been schooled for responsible driving regardless of the situation.

The race at Albert Park set the record for having the maximum number of Red Flag in a GP. While that makes for an interesting statistic, the second restart was utter chaos. The incident relevant to us is when Carlos Sainz bumped into his fellow countryman, Alonso. And all that chaos was for nothing. After a zillion incidents, the racing order was reset as it was before the restart. But that drew a 5-second penalty for Sainz. This meant that he fell out of points due to the closely bunched nature of the cars. While Sainz and Ferrari both went on to criticize the FIA’s call, there is no taking away from the fact that, regardless of whether a reset or not, responsible driving is the key.

In the F1: Chequered Flag podcast, the host holds the younger Spaniard liable. He said, “That could be confusing because people were asking did that racing even happen because we effectively took the positions back anyway to before the restarts. The racing did happen. The distance happened. It was recorded in the race. We completed that lap as expected. You are still liable for being a safe and responsible driver. And following all the sporting regulations, even if, regardless of whether the lap counted or not.”

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But to make people understand better why a lap that didn’t count, counted enough for a penalty to be sent Sainz’s way, the hosts referred to a hypothetical example.

An example to understand the wrongdoing of Carlos Sainz

Carlos Sainz was complaining on his radio when the stewards told the team about the penalty. A sight we didn’t expect to witness, but the man even expressed his utter disgust in the post-race interview. He mentioned that he doesn’t want to say anything because it won’t be as nice. However, in the same podcast, the hosts gave an analogy to make the listeners understand that even if the lap didn’t count, Sainz broke the rules.

The host said, “You know if in the formation lap, if Sainz steams in the back of Alonso, he is still going to get a penalty for that and you know, I can understand it is confusing. But basically, he broke the rules whether or not they took the positions back. It still deserves a penalty and that is why he got his 5-seconds.”

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Do you think the penalty given to Sainz was justified? Or was it an overstep on FIA’s part?