“If not, we’re all gonna start playing with it,” Carlos Sainz refuses to comment on Sergio Perez’s Monaco crash but asks for drivers causing red flags in Q3 to be penalized
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Carlos Sainz
There’s been quite a bit of a storm on social media lately, relating to two incidents in particular: Max Verstappen refused to let Sergio Perez back through in Brazil, saying that he has his ‘reasons’. Soon, Dutch media reports emerged that the ‘reasons’ might be related to Perez’s crash in Monaco Q3, earlier this year, which according to the reports, was deliberate. Carlos Sainz also gave his two cents.
Some people have examined the telemetry, and they find the incident a bit off. However, Red Bull are keeping the matter ‘internal’, so we are unlikely to ever know the full truth. While speaking to the media on Thursday, Sainz was asked for his thoughts on the alleged ‘deliberate’ Perez crash in Monaco. The Spaniard had been just behind the Mexican on the occasion and was unable to avoid clattering into the RB-18, rear-first.
While he did not comment on the incident being on purpose or not, Sainz told media including Planet F1: “Without commenting if it was on purpose or not, I think it’s for real now that all drivers – we want some kind of a rule. If you generate a red flag or a yellow flag, even if it’s intentional or not, there should be something done to that driver, because you’ve compromised the other nine on purpose, or maybe not.”
The Ferrari driver further elaborated that he has seen ‘a lot more play around with it’, more than what even the media may have picked up: “But you should get a penalty for it. If not, we’re all gonna start playing with it. I’ve seen over the last few years a lot more play around with it, than what you might even have picked out in the media.”
Carlos Sainz: Other drivers know immediately if a crash is on purpose or not
While he refused to say his thoughts on if Sergio Perez’s Monaco crash was on purpose or not, Carlos Sainz also made it clear that drivers know when someone does crash on purpose: “I’m not gonna go into whether if it was on purpose or not, I think all 20 drivers in ourselves, when we analyse these kind of incidents, we know immediately if the driver has done it on purpose or not, because we’re not stupid.”
According to Sainz, if there was some sort of penalty for causing a red flag, crashing on purpose would not even go through your head: “But I’m not going to comment. It’s an incident of the past. I’m just going to say that, if there would be a rule, it wouldn’t even go through your head.” asking to specifically apply the rule to Q3, as this means there will be a lot to gain in the session, but also a lot to lose.
When asked if the drivers had reached a consensus on a penalty system, Sainz responded in the negative, but also added that even though the issue has been raised a couple of times, it’s yet to be conclusively discussed.
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Aniket Tripathi
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