“FIA Gonna Penalize Him”: Carlos Sainz Missing Williams Pit Box Leaves Fans Cooking Wild Theories

Starting life at Williams hasn’t been too smooth for the smooth operator. Carlos Sainz has struggled to adapt to the FW47 so far, and as he looks to make amends this weekend in Japan, another curveball has been thrown his way.

F1 action resumed after a week’s break, with drivers taking to the track at Suzuka for FP1. Sainz completed 28 laps around the iconic circuit and looked decently quick, finishing P10 on the final leaderboard—one place and just six-hundredths of a second ahead of Alex Albon.

However, there was an unfortunate incident midway through the session when Sainz, called into the pits by his team, missed his designated stopping point. The Spaniard immediately realized his mistake and apologized over the team radio. But to be fair, the chances of making this error in Suzuka are towering.

At Suzuka, the pit-lane order is reversed compared to most circuits. Typically, the defending Constructors’ Champions are placed at the start of the lane, followed by the second-placed team, then third, and so on. But in Japan, it’s the other way around. That meant Sauber, who finished P10 in 2024, had their garage near the pit entry, with Williams right after.

Before pitting, Williams reminded Sainz that his box was near the start of the pit lane. Yet, he still overshot it—an understandable mistake, but ultimately his own. “Guys, I’m sorry, I thought we are at the end,” the Madrid-born driver said on the team radio.

Almost immediately, fans took to X (formerly Twitter) to react to Sainz’s mistake, with some joking that his “Ferrari hangover” caused him to miss the Williams garage. After all, he spent four years with the Italian team and wasn’t eager to leave ahead of 2025—but he had to make way for Lewis Hamilton.

Sportsinfo Xtreme did poke fun at the fact that perhaps Sainz forgot he switched teams. “Muscle memory? Carlos Sainz drives past the Williams pit box, forgetting he’s no longer with Ferrari.”

Some other fans, however, had some bolder predictions. If they come true, Sainz’s weekend could be off to a horrid start already. “FIA gonna penalize him for this,” a user wrote on X.

Thankfully for Williams and Sainz, the chances of any consequences were low. Simply driving through the pit lane without any irregularities doesn’t warrant a penalty, and Sainz was within the speed limit. In reality, it was just a minor, embarrassing moment for him.

Or could he really be missing Ferrari?

Old habits die hard for Sainz

Sainz was well settled at the Maranello-based outfit and, given the choice, would never have stopped wearing Ferrari red. But what’s done is done. He’s now a Williams driver and must adapt to a completely new environment to succeed.

That said, he’s admittedly finding it difficult to settle in with the Grove-based team.

“I was used to a certain type of car at Ferrari, which made me end up driving, especially since 2022, in a very specific way to extract everything about that car,” he said ahead of FP1 in Japan.  “You fall into habits in your driving that then you apply to the next car, and it might work in some corners but in other it makes you very weak.” 

However, the 30-year-old insisted he would try different approaches to unlearn his Ferrari habits—a process that may take time. If not, he says, “it’s back to the drawing board to try different things until we find where that lap time is.”