"Took a long ass time": Fans react to Carlos Sainz winning the right to review for F1 Dutch GP penalty

Carlos Sainz and Liam Lawson had a collision at the Dutch GP, for which the Spaniard was held responsible and was given a 10-second in-race penalty and two penalty points. However, unhappy with the stewards' decision, Williams filed a petition for a right of review and was awarded the decision they wanted, leading fans to slam the FIA for taking a long time to conclude that the clash was a racing incident.

After a safety car restart at the Dutch GP, Lawson and Sainz had an incident which saw the pair suffering massive damage to their cars. With the Kiwi having the right to the corner as he was ahead at the apex of turn 1, stewards had deemed the attacking driver, who was Sainz, to be at fault for the incident.

However, the incident was partly down to the Racing Bulls' driver suffering a snap of oversteer at the middle of the corner. With Williams bringing unavailable camera footage from both cars to the FIA's table, meetings were scheduled to decide whether the penalty that Sainz received was justifiable.

Moreover, 10 days after Williams had filed the initial right of review petition, the decision came in its favor. But, the F1 fans were unhappy with how long the matter had dragged on after the initial flawed decision was made, as they wrote on X:

"Took a long ass time but this is to all the 5 lawson fans and the haters that said it couldnt be done."

🌶

@Baraneetto

Took a long ass time but this is to all the 5 lawson fans and the haters that said it couldnt be done

"Only taken you 2 weeks," one fan wrote.

"waste of 10s penalty," another fan wrote.

Meanwhile, a host of other fans also shared their views:

"What a joke. The initial decision was 100% wrong," one netizen wrote.

"Good for Carlos and Williams not having those 2 penalty points on his record. Shame nothing can be done about the 10 second penalty," another netizen wrote.

"Wish they hadn’t served the penalty so we could have fought to get that repealed as well. But this is definitely better than nothing 💪," a third netizen shared.

Carlos Sainz had finished 14th at the Dutch GP, at an event where he had qualified ninth.

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Williams was content with Carlos Sainz being acquitted by the FIA

Williams' Carlos Sainz at the F1 Grand Prix of Italy - Source: Getty

While Carlos Sainz has not had a points-scoring finish in the past six race weekends, his only saving grace seems to be the right of review's decision falling in his favor. Moreover, this also meant that his penalty points tally was reduced from four to back to two for the 12-month period.

Sharing their happiness with the decision, Williams issued a team statement on the FIA's latest verdict:

"We are grateful to the stewards for reviewing Carlos' Zandvoort penalty and are pleased they have now decided he was not at fault and that this was a racing incident."

Sainz sits 18th in the championship standings, having amassed 16 points in the 16 race weekends held so far.