Ryan Smart
The FIA have confirmed to Ferrari the real reason why Carlos Sainz did not get a penalty for a pit lane incident at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, it has been reported.
Sainz was running in fourth place and ahead of Lewis Hamilton when he moved over to the left side of the track to enter the pits.
But the Spaniard decided to move back across the pit line at the last minute and returned to the track.
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Sainz's race engineer Riccardo Adami told his driver that the team were not ready with new tyres, and he did an extra lap before finally pitting.
Crossing the pit exit line is normally accompanied by a time penalty, but there was no notification that Sainz was being investigated for the incident nor was any punishment given.
As a result, the Spaniard was allowed to keep the third place he secured on track in Vegas. Had he received a five-second time penalty, he would have dropped behind team-mate Charles Leclerc.
Sky Sports F1 reporter Ted Kravitz has revealed that he spoke to Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur about the incident and the reasoning he was given by the FIA for the decision not to have resulted in a penalty.
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He explained: "Sainz didn't get a penalty for crossing the line on the way into the pit lane because, but Vasseur explained it that the race director treated it as a track limits infraction, not contravening any rule or any race direction notes.
"Carlos Sainz would have said, 'Thank you very much', because it meant he was on the podium and not Charles Leclerc."
Additionally, an automatic time penalty for crossing the white line of the pit entry line isn't mandated in F1 rules. It can be added as a race director's instruction before each race, though it wasn't included in the notes before the Las Vegas Grand Prix weekend.
Formula 2 and 3 race director Rui Marques was in the F1 hotseat for the first time during the Vegas weekend after the exit of former chief Niels Wittich after a series of controversial incidents at the Brazilian Grand Prix.
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Marques is F1's third race director in the three seasons since Michael Masi was sacked following his decision-making at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
There could yet be another fresh name in the hotseat for 2025, with Marques' contract only running until the end of the current season.