Carlos Sainz left Miami furious about the way Max Verstappen drove around him, and even angrier about a stewarding system the Williams driver believes is collapsing in front of the sport.
The Spaniard's mood was set during the race itself, when his radio call after being pushed wide at turn 17 by Verstappen's recovering Red Bull captured exactly how the Grand Prix Drivers' Association director feels the rule book is being applied. The stewards noted the incident. They did nothing about it.
"He pushed me off. He thinks he can do whatever he wants just because he's racing in the midfield," Sainz said over team radio.
Speaking after the chequered flag, Sainz did not back away from a single word. He still considers Verstappen's move borderline and "too aggressive", although in his view ultimately part of racing. The deeper grievance is the bigger pattern, and that is the one Sainz has been pushing as a senior figure inside the GPDA.
The story behind his irritation is consistent across the season. Sainz has been the most vocal driver this year on the need for permanent fixed stewards, and Miami delivered the strongest case study yet for the reform. Verstappen received a five-second penalty for his front-left tyre crossing the solid white pit-exit line — a call so simple it usually takes minutes to confirm — but the Miami panel told the teams it could not rule live because there was insufficient camera footage. Hours later, after fresh angles were sourced, the decision finally arrived. The penalty did not move Verstappen on the timing screen. The image of a system unable to confirm a painted-line breach during the race did the damage.
Charles Leclerc's 20-second penalty for cutting four chicanes with a damaged Ferrari, and Lewis Hamilton's similar but lighter punishment in Singapore last year, were the comparison points the drivers seized on. Same broad rule, different panels, different outcomes.
Verstappen's own response to Sainz's complaint summed up exactly the philosophical gulf between the two. The Dutchman, asked about the radio outburst, did not push back at the substance. He just said it was not worth talking about.
"It's a bit of a jungle in the midfield," Verstappen said.
It was the only line he gave on the issue. No defence, no apology — a four-time world champion treating the matter as a fact of life rather than a question to answer.
For Sainz, that is precisely the problem. He has spent months publicly arguing that rotating stewards across every weekend is incompatible with the increasing complexity of the regulations. The 2026 International Sporting Code revisions allowed stewards to review their own decisions and tightened the definition of penalty-point offences. The driving-standards guidelines were rewritten. Off-site stewards were added. None of those reforms answered the structural complaint that the same incident at two different rounds can produce two different rulings depending on which panel is in the room.
"It's the same people judging the same rules," is the reform Sainz keeps returning to in private. The Miami stewards' inability to confirm a pit-exit line breach during a race made the case more publicly than any GPDA briefing has.
The Williams driver did not stop at one incident. He noted that he had been pushed wide by Verstappen, that the contact between Verstappen and George Russell at the final corner went unpenalised, that the Hamilton-Colapinto collision at turn 11 was waved through, and that Liam Lawson's gearbox failure that sent Pierre Gasly's Alpine flipping across the gravel produced no investigation. Two penalties handed down for technical infractions; multiple physical contacts let go.
The pattern is what Sainz wants the FIA to confront. The regulations have become more complicated; the panels judging them have not become more consistent. After Miami, the driver who lost track position to Verstappen has the loudest microphone for that argument.
"He thinks he can do whatever he wants," Sainz said. The next test of whether the FIA agrees comes at Canada.
Source: youtube.com