Did Sainz get a penalty because Mercedes voted against their appeal?

Carlos Sainz has received a grid penalty of 10 spots for replacing his engine parts despite the damage coming from the track. Nine teams reportedly voted in favour, and one did not. The big question is, who?

Sainz sustained substantial damage after an incident with a manhole cover in the first free practice session. The incident caused so much damage that the Spaniard had to replace several engine parts. This forced the stewards to penalise Sainz, as he had already used the maximum number of parts this year.

Has Mercedes started to be obstructive?

It remains remarkable that a driver gets a penalty for something the circuit caused. David Croft reports to Sky Sports that nine teams would have voted to allow Sainz to replace the parts without a penalty, but that one team refused to do so. This appears to be true when the broadcast puts this question to McLaren CEO Zak Brown.

''Yes, that is unfortunate. We know with Formula 1, there is a lot of self-interest from time to time. But I think you do need something like that. But yeah, it is a little bit unfortunate and a little bit unfair. I don't know who it was, but probably someone at odds with them," Brown concluded.

Of course, with that comment, you quickly end up with Mercedes, but they deny to Ted Kravitz that there would be any such thing. The team argues that there was no vote at all. ''Mercedes argues that they have not been able to cross at all. They could only have done so if a penalty had been misapplied.''