Carlos Sainz hits out at FIA over perceived lack of 'sporting equity'

Carlos Sainz has voiced his dissatisfaction with the FIA over what he perceives to be a lack of "sporting equity" from motorsport's governing body.

Sainz implied bias was at play over some recent decisions taken, making reference to a call made last weekend at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.

After the chaos on the formation lap at the Sepang International Circuit, the FIA opted to start the race in the original grid order, despite the regulations suggesting that the new, jumbled-up positions should have been used to determine who starts where once racing did eventually get underway.

Due to the disarray that took place on account of the "software bug" that plagued some cars, it was felt that common sense prevailed, with numerous cars displaced from their original positions and cars split across multiple laps.

Fast forward to sprint qualifying at the Singapore Grand Prix, an "unfortunate human error" during SQ1 meant that Overtake Mode was not activated once the session resumed following a Sergio Perez-induced red flag.

The FIA confirmed that it was subsequently turned on, but after just 27 seconds, it was actively disabled again, to try to preserve sporting fairness.

However, in doing so, this advantaged some drivers over others. Sainz, who qualified P22 and last under the lights at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, was not one of those, so was consequently disadvantaged — to the tune of half a second.

"Unfortunately, we had a really poor lap there," Sainz said after SQ1 in Singapore. "We only got one lap, and we had some issues with the brakes in FP1; we had to change them... [and] we were still having some brake issues — had a few lockups, struggling a lot with that and with the tyres."

Turning his attention to the issue at hand, which has since been confirmed to be the result of human error in race control, Sainz, who is also a Grand Prix Drivers' Association (GDPA) director, added: "But, on top of that, half of the cars did the lap with half a second quicker engine than the others.

"There was another software issue with the cars. This time around, we were on the bad end of it."

Sainz sees inconsistencies

Sainz was aggrieved by the FIA decision-making process seemingly advantaging bigger teams and drivers, with none of the headline names affected by the mistake in race control during SQ1.

"And for whatever reason, the FIA, like in Malaysia, didn't decide to do sporting equity, and were happy to do half of the cars in qualifying with a higher power than the other half of the cars," the four-time grand prix winner added.

"So a bit confused why the sport keeps doing different things depending on who is out in Q1 or who is out in Lap 1."

The Williams driver also stood to gain considerably after the disorder of the formation lap in Sepang, when the FIA decided to revert the grid order and nullify any changes in position.

At the time, Lewis Hamilton — who had qualified second alongside polesitter Max Verstappen — was the biggest name to be handed the reprieve, playing directly into Sainz's remarks.