Carlos Sainz had been performing strongly for his team around the Albert Park Circuit in Australia, moving his Ferrari from P5 to P4 before a second red flag was waved.
As the drivers restarted the race, chaos broke out with cars making a last dash to rise up the rankings.
With a tightly packed grid moving into turn one, Sainz hit the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso, knocking his fellow Spaniard out of the race and into the gravel.
The incident wouldn’t eventually hurt Alonso’s chances, as a third red flag would hand him back his P3 spot when the stewards reverted to the previous starting order.
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However, Sainz was still hit with a five second penalty by the stewards for causing a collision with Alonso.
Under normal race conditions, Sainz might have been able to cling onto the points by fighting hard on track in the final stages of the race.
But, with the last lap conducted behind the safety car, as drivers were led to the grid, the field was so tightly packed that Sainz fell from fourth to twelfth – the last of the classified cars.
With Charles Leclerc having crashed out of the race on lap one, Sainz’s penalty meant Ferrari left Australia with zero points, hurting their title chances this season.
“We did the petition for review of the case, that we’re sending to the FIA,” Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur told reporters.
“I don’t want to disclose any details of this discussion.
“The only thing is that [Pierre] Gasly and [Esteban] Ocon, we also had [Logan] Sargeant and [Nyck] De Vries at Turn 1, and the reaction from the stewards was not the same [as it was with Sainz],” he added.
READ: Carlos Sainz told to stop whinging about FIA penalty
Gasly avoided any sanction from the stewards despite wiping out his own teammate, taking both Alpines out of the points
Sargeant also wasn’t punished for crashing into the back of the AlphaTauri driver near the back of the grid, ending their race with a few laps to go.
“What we can expect is at least to have an open discussion with them [FIA] and also for the good of the sport, to avoid to have this kind of decision when you have three cases at the same corner and this indecision,” Vasseur said.