"A bit unfair"- Fans react to Carlos Sainz's pit stop penalty at 2022 F1 Dutch GP

Carlos Sainz had a tedious 72 laps at the 2022 F1 Dutch Grand Prix with a plethora of problems. It's safe to say that it wasn't his best race, and he wants to forget it completely. When the virtual safety car was issued, Sainz was called in for a change of tyres. Unlike the first one, the pit stop went smoothly.

Lando Norris' McLaren had pitted ahead of Sainz. While he was leaving the pit lane, a McLaren mechanic was going around the car, and Sainz had to slow down to avoid hitting him. During this, Fernando Alonso's Alpine which was behind Carlos touched his rear tyre. Therefore, Sainz received a 5-second penalty while exiting the pit lane, which appeared to be an unsafe release from the pit stop.

Everyone feels this penalty was quite unnecessary and unfair.

"I think the penalty for unsafe release is a bit unfair. He was trying to avoid hitting an engineer from McLaren."

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Carlos Sainz and his fans are quite frustrated about this

Sainz was penalized for an unsafe release, which caused disruption in the pit lane. However, after seeing the replay from another angle, fans believed that the release itself wasn't unsafe. They took to Twitter to express their disappointment with the penalty:

Carlos Sainz believes Fernando Alonso exaggered the situation to cause penalty

Ferrari's team principal Matia Binotto believes the 5-second penalty, which brought down Carlos Sainz from P5 to P8, was "very, very harsh". He disagrees with the stewards' decision because the pit lane was very short due to which Sainz had to drive past Lando Norris' McLaren.

Carlos Sainz also explained why he had to slow down:

“By the time they released me it was clearly safe with Fernando [Alonso]. But then I had to hit the brakes to not hit the McLaren mechanic who ran in my exit line."

He added:

“It was this braking that generated the unsafe release – if you can call it unsafe, because I was clearly frustrated by it. I thought I had saved someone’s life, and not made a dangerous situation.”

Sainz stated openly that he believes the Alpine driver, Fernando Alonso, exaggerated the incident in order to get Sainz a penalty. Carlos stated his reasons for slowing down and that it was not as dangerous as Alonso made it look like:

“The problem was this McLaren mechanic with a jack that ran into my driving line. I had to brake, and I didn’t get my pit exit right. Is it my fault? Is it my team’s fault? No. I had to hit my brakes and I am sure Fernando also exaggerated a bit, hitting me to try and get me a penalty.”

Ferrari will have to get over this messy race soon and focus on Monza for the following week.