Carlos Sainz angry after ‘human error’ puts brakes on Singapore sprint qualifying

SINGAPORE – Carlos Sainz criticised the International Automobile Federation (FIA) after a race-control mistake slowed down cars qualifying for Singapore’s sprint on Oct 9, with the Williams driver saying the glitch was reminiscent of software problems at the previous week’s Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.

After the first sprint qualifying session was red-flagged when Cadillac’s Sergio Perez crashed into a barrier, race control staff belatedly reactivated “Overtake Mode” for 27 seconds before switching it off for the rest of the session.

Overtake Mode gives drivers extra power and toggling it on helped drivers who were setting a lap time at the end of the session while Sainz was eliminated.

“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 and we were on the bad end of it,” Sainz said.

“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 quali with higher power than the other half of the cars.

“So a bit confused why the sport keeps doing different things depending on who is out in Q1 or who is out in lap one.”

Last weekend a software bug caused chaos in Sepang, with cars slowing to a crawl on two formation laps held after race officials aborted the original start because of heavy rain.

The FIA said in a statement there was a “human error” that left overtake mode disabled after the red flag period, before it was reactivated for 27 seconds and turned off again.

“The FIA acknowledges that this unfortunate human error had an impact on the performance of certain cars based on the timing of their run and their position around the lap,” it said, adding that the second and third periods were not affected.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen took pole position in qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix sprint race on Oct 10, pipping Mercedes driver George Russell. – REUTERS