Carlos Sainz did not wait for the dust to settle at Suzuka before delivering a damning verdict – one that cut straight to the heart of Formula 1’s latest safety controversy.
The Williams driver and GPDA director has effectively accused the FIA and the sport’s leadership of ignoring repeated warnings from drivers, after Oliver Bearman suffered a violent, high-speed crash during Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix.
The race at Suzuka, won by Kimi Antonelli, was overshadowed by a frightening incident at Spoon Curve, where Bearman encountered a dramatically slower car mid-corner due to energy management.
The closing speed – estimated at around 50 km/h – left Bearman with no realistic chance of avoiding disaster, a situation compounded by Franco Colapinto – dealing at that moment with the systemic “derating” of his Alpine car’s power unit – giving the Haas driver seemingly little room to avoid veering off course.
Bearman’s attempt to swerve only sent him spinning backwards into the barriers, registering a brutal 50G impact.
A warning ignored
Sainz’s reaction was immediate – and uncompromising – as he emerged as the leading voice of a frustrated grid.
“I am hopeful that we will come up with something a bit better for Miami, given the fact that the accident that we saw today, we’ve been warning them about this kind of thing happening,” he said, speaking to Sky F1.
“With these kinds of closing speeds, and this kind of accident was always going to happen, and I’m not very happy with what we’ve had up until now.”
©F1
The crux of the grievance lies in the energy management of the current power units. While the FIA’s Nikolas Tombazis suggested the governing body has "aces up its sleeve" to tweak the rules, Sainz suggests the hand should have been played months ago.
“Hopefully, we come up with a better solution that doesn’t create these massive closing speeds and a safer way of going racing,” the Williams driver added.
“I was so surprised when they said: ‘No, we will sort qualifying answers, leave the racing alone because it is exciting’, because as drivers, we’ve been extremely vocal that the problem is not only qualifying, it is also racing.”
The specter of the street circuits
The terrifying reality of Sunday’s crash was the location. At Suzuka, Bearman had the luxury of an escape road to scrub some momentum.
Sainz was quick to point out that the sport's current calendar – increasingly dominated by concrete-lined corridors – will not be so forgiving.
“We’ve been warning that this kind of accident was always going to happen, and we were lucky there was an escape road,” Sainz warned. “Now, imagine going to Baku, or Singapore, or Vegas and having these kinds of closing speeds and crashes next to walls.”
Franco Colapinto leads Oliver Bearman moments before the Haas driver's high-speed crash in Sunday's Japanese GP.
As a GPDA lead, Sainz’s rhetoric has shifted from suggestion to demand. The "excitement" cited by commercial stakeholders is, in the eyes of those behind the wheel, a thin veil for a dangerous speed differential that turns fellow competitors into stationary targets.
“As the GPDA, we’ve warned the FIA that these accidents are going to happen with these regulations, and we need to change something soon if we don’t want them to happen,” Sainz concluded.
Read also: FIA responds to Bearman’s 50G crash at Suzuka – promises review“It was 50G, my accident in Russia 2015 was 46G, so just imagine what kind of crash you would have in Vegas or Baku. I hope it serves as an example and they listen to the drivers and not so much the teams. Some people said that the racing was OK, because the racing is not OK.”
With Miami looming in a month’s time, the ball is firmly in the hands of the FIA, who must decide if their "aces" are worth more than the safety of the men in the cars.
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