Sainz said there had been a number of incidents this year in which drivers had been penalised for incidents that did not justify a penalty, including three involving him with Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson in the Dutch Grand Prix, with Haas driver Oliver Bearman in Italy and Antonelli in Austin.
“I didn’t understand my Zandvoort penalty,” Sainz said, on media day before this weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
“I didn’t understand why Ollie got a penalty when we both collided in Monza. He was not deserving of that penalty and I told him straight out of the race. I didn’t understand how I caught a 10-second in Austin. And then the Brazil situation.
“There’s been not one but multiple incidents this year that for me are far from where the sport should be.”
The drivers are to have a meeting with stewards from the FIA at the next race in Qatar to go through what Sainz’s team-mate Alex Albon called the “list” of incidents they feel need reviewing.
Sainz said: “It is very clear for me that, after what I saw in Brazil, it’s something that’s not quite working if we had to judge that as a 10-second penalty for the guy that had no fault for anything that he did.”
The issue is the way stewards interpret the driving standards’ guidelines, external issued by the FIA at the start of the year.
These were written following consultation with the drivers but were not approved by the GPDA before publication.
The general feeling among drivers is that the guidelines are being applied strictly, without the application of common sense and experience of how wheel-to-wheel racing worked.
Piastri was penalised because he did not at all times comply with the requirement to have his front axle at least alongside Antonelli’s wing mirror in the lead-up to the incident, and had locked his brakes so was deemed to be out of control.
But Sainz said he “struggled” with the way stewards interpreted a locked brake.
“Whenever we see a lock-up, a steward immediately interprets that as out of control,” he said. “A lock-up not always means out of control. You can lock up and still make the apex.
“I locked up in Austin in reaction to a move that Kimi did and Oscar locks up in Brazil in reaction too.
“It’s not like we were out of control and we were going to miss the apex crash and create a massive accident. So I think the way those lock-ups are interpreted in terms of out of control I think is also something that must be reviewed.”
Mercedes’ George Russell, a fellow GPDA director, said: “There’s a bit of a wording, or a view, that if a car is locking up it’s deemed to be out of control.
“This corner in Brazil is totally cambered into the corner, the inside of the car is always going to be unloaded and that tyre is not even on the ground, so that tyre is locking but you’re totally in control.
“So that’s why it has to be guidelines and you have to treat every single corner, every circuit, every incident totally different.”
Russell said the FIA should introduce a permanent set of stewards to improve the situation.
Albon added: “There’s no ignorance in (the FIA’s) approach to it. There is an open-minded ‘OK, please, let’s work on this together and find a solution.’
“It’s not this ‘you versus us’ approach. We do appreciate that as drivers. Will it come to a clear rule set? I’m not sure.”
