Carlos Sainz drops to P17 after rare penalty lap

Carlos Sainz was hit with a one-lap post-race penalty after the British Grand Prix, with FIA stewards ruling that Williams allowed car 55 to overtake the Safety Car when it was not entitled to do so, dropping him from 12th to 17th.

The penalty came from an unusual sequence in the closing stages at Silverstone. During the late Safety Car period on the penultimate lap of the 52-lap race, race control authorized certain lapped cars to pass the Safety Car and rejoin at the back of the field after Max Verstappen's crash. Sainz joined that process, but the stewards found his situation was different.

According to the decision, car 55 was a lap down at Safety Car Line 1 when entering the pit lane. But because of Silverstone's specific track and pit-lane configuration, it had temporarily put itself back onto the lead lap by the time it crossed the line at the end of the lap in which it crossed Safety Car Line 1 for the second time after the Safety Car was deployed. That meant, for the purposes of Article B5.13.4 c) of the FIA Formula 1 Sporting Regulations, Sainz was not a lapped car when the message "LAPPED CARS MAY NOW OVERTAKE" was displayed.

The stewards said car 55 nevertheless unlapped itself once that message was shown. They also noted that after completing its pit stop, Sainz became a lapped car again when he rejoined the track, creating the unusual sequence that Williams misread.

The Williams team representative admitted the team made two mistakes, first by failing to recognize that car 55 "was not a lapped car at the relevant reference point under Article B5.13.4 c)," and second by failing to notice that Sainz "was not included in the Race Control message identifying the cars permitted to overtake the Safety Car." The representative also accepted that the team "inadvertently gained a lap when they were not entitled to do so."

In deciding the sanction, the stewards said they considered Article 12.4.1.i of the FIA International Sporting Code and concluded that a penalty lap was available to them and was "the most appropriate penalty in the circumstances of this case." That decision changed Sainz's final classification from P12 to P17.