Sainz controversially benefitted from being allowed to take his original third place on the grid for the Monaco restart after its early red flag, with Zhou’s role central to how things played out.
The Ferrari driver’s race had initially appeared to be over just a few seconds after the start when the Spaniard picked up a puncture as he clashed with Oscar Piastri at the first corner.
A small cut in his front left tyre, likely from Piastri’s floor, was enough for his tyre to lose air pressure and leave him a passenger as he skidded wide at Casino Square.
As he initially came to a halt, the rest of the pack came streaming past and left him facing up to a potential non-points score as he moved to find reverse and trudge slowly back to the pits.
But his afternoon turned on its head when, just as he reached the hairpin – with the leaders already on their way out of the chicane – the red flag came out because of the crash involving Sergio Perez and the two Haas cars.
In ordinary circumstances, the red flag would not have been of tremendous benefit to Sainz beyond meaning he would not end up completely adrift of the pack for the subsequent restart.
He almost certainly would have been shocked to have been told that he would not be taking it from the 16th place he was on the road.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24, Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL38, Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24, Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38, the rest of the field at the start
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
That is because F1’s sporting regulations are clear in how they take the order for any restart from a red flag.
They state that: “it will be taken at the last point at which it was possible to determine the position of all cars.”
From the outside, it was fairly obvious from the television images where the cars were running when the red flag came out, but that is not good enough for determining the grid.
Instead, as was highlighted amid a similar red flag situation at the 2023 Australian Grand Prix when Haas was upset that Nico Hulkenberg had been moved back at a red flag restart despite being fourth on the road at the time, the FIA has precedent for taking the quickest and more reliable route it can.
Using GPS data, which is pretty accurate these days, is not good enough for being totally sure about the positioning of cars relative to each other.
As was stated by the stewards in the 2023 Australian GP verdict: “They [Haas] acknowledged that…
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