BAKU, Azerbaijan - Williams driver Carlos Sainz said it's time Formula 1 embraced a permanent race stewards to stop the growing noise about inconsistent and unclear decisions over wheel-to-wheel racing.
Sainz was talking on the topic after his Williams team successfully got part of his Dutch Grand Prix penalty overturned by successfully submitting new evidence to the governing FIA to consider, something which rarely happens in Formula 1.
The two penalty points Sainz was given on his superlicence, which can eventually add up to a one-race ban, were rescinded.
On the decision Sainz, also a leader of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association (GPDA), said: "It's a breakthrough because it's the first time that I've managed to present new evidence and accept a hearing.
"We tried before and we never managed in other teams, so it shows that the mechanism is there and is there for a reason, which I'm finally happy that we can use that mechanism in the case where it's black and white like it was in my case."
Williams submitted two new camera angles of the incident with Liam Lawson's Racing Bull at Zandvoort, which the stewards agreed showed the collision was a "racing incident" rather than the fault of Sainz.
Decisions over in-race incidents remain a hot topic. Incidents are judged by a set of guidelines written by the FIA which dictate who has the right to a corner in certain incidents, although no two collisions on track are ever similar, complicating the decision-making process and leaving it open to different interpretations by different stewards. On that, Sainz said: "I think the guidelines have been an effort to make it very clear for the stewards and the drivers to know who is likely to have responsibility [in a collision], but I'm not going to lie, I think they haven't had the impact that we all wish they had in terms of making it clearer."
The FIA currently has upwards of 20 stewards it can call on at every grand prix weekend. A total of four from that panel will oversee every race. The idea of having three or four permanent stewards has been floated before, with one argument in favour being that drivers would learn how each individual steward interpreted the rules.
A counter argument against them has been who would pay the salaries to convince people to commit to F1's grueling 24-race season. Sainz dismissed that idea, saying there is more than enough money in F1.
"As a group, the FIA, if we all agree that should be the way forward where at least two of the three stewards are permanent and we have one rotational for teaching purposes and sporting fairness purposes to have always one rotational but two permanent, I think we shouldn't care about who pays because there's enough money in this sport to pay those salaries the same way that there's enough money in this sport to pay the salaries of all the other people," he said.
"If [permanent stewards] is the right way forward I cannot believe we're talking about those salaries."
When asked why there aren't already permanent stewards, Sainz said: "Because not everyone agrees. I think not everyone agrees the same way that they can use the argument of football. Why in football we have different referees and no one complains? Or other sports have always the same referee and the sporting fairness that there could be a guy that if he gets penalised two or three times he will start blaming, is that true or that [this referee] hates me?
"So I understand where they come from and those that defend not permanent stewards, I understand their point."
Sainz pointed to the example of the FIA's race director Rui Marques, who delegates in-race decisions to the stewards panel, and the stability that has come from having one person in that key role.
"I just have a very clear opinion on that," Sainz said of a permanent panel. "We have it with the race director, I'm really enjoying this new race director, the approach he has and we're starting to understand the kind of decisions that he's going to take and the relationship is growing thanks to working now for a year with him.
"I see him being in the sport for quite a long time and we're not changing race director every race, we have a fixed race director and I see the benefits that that gives to the sport and the development with the drivers and the development of the relationship."