Explained: Why has Ferrari appealed against Carlos Sainz's penalty? 

Ferrari confirmed that they will appeal the five-second penalty that Carlos Sainz received in the dying moments of the F1 Australian GP last week.

The Spanish driver collided with Aston Martin driver and his hero Fernando Alonso while battling for P3 with three laps remaining. The collision sent the two-time world champion spinning, momentarily impacting his chances of achieving points in the race. The stewards decided to reinstate Alonso in P3 after calling out the red flag with two laps remaining.

However, they did not cancel out Sainz's penalty, dropping him off the points after the safety car ended. While appearing on The Race podcast, F1 pundit Scott Mitchell-Malm explained:

"The basic version is, 'Well, you didn't penalize others, so why are you penalizing us?' That seems to be the extent of it at the moment. They are arguing that, for example, Alpine teammates colliding, was dealt with a steward's hearing. Both drivers went in and had their say and no action was taken."

"Then Logan Sergeant even escaped a formal investigation for completely spearing Nyck de Vries into Turn 1. This was all part of the same chaos of that final standing start after the red flag and Ferrari's argument is effectively their unhappy that they didn't get a chance to make their case to the stewards when Alpine did and the other one didn't even go to the stewards."

“We are sticking to the plan" - Ferrari team boss on their upgrades

Ferrari team principal Frederic Vassuer mentioned that the team have planned a flow to introduce the upgrades for the 2023 season.

Speaking to the media, including Motorsportweek, Vassuer said:

“We have a flow of updates. Some will come not at Baku because at Baku we have the aero package for the level of downforce, [and] with the sprint races it’s not the easiest one. But from Miami, Imola, not Monaco but Barcelona, each race we will have an update on the car."

“We are sticking to the plan. We made some adjustments in terms of balance and behavior and it was much better in Melbourne we’ll continue in this direction. We will speed up. We will put all the resources to speed up the process and the updates that were planned for Barcelona will come in Imola and we will have one or two races the update in advance.”

Hopefully, the upgrades can impact the performance of Ferrari and get them closer to Red Bull.