There was some controversy at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix on Sunday when Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez had a close moment at the Safety Car line following the accident of Nicholas Latifi.

Perez had been leading and controlling the opening part of the race before boxing at the end of lap 15 for a set of hards.

Cruelly for the Mexican, the Safety Car was brought out on the following lap as Latifi crashed at the last corner.

It allowed Leclerc, Verstappen and ultimately Sainz to jump the Red Bull man as they saved a lot of time by pitting under Safety Car conditions.

On pit exit, Sainz just got to the Safety Car line ahead of Perez, despite the Mexican’s best efforts.

However, Perez thought he had got there first and was ahead, before Sainz was eventually let through after the race restarted.

Speaking after the race, Sainz believes that the positions should have been switched quicker – and not wait until they’re back under green flag conditions.

It also meant the 27-year-old couldn't potentially attack Verstappen when the race resumed. 

“It definitely was very strange,” said Sainz.

“I think as a sport we need to keep analysing these things because we could simplify things so much more if Checo would have just given me the position during the safety car which basically would have given me an opportunity to fight Max at the restart and would have given Checo on opportunity to fight me to get the position.

“But what happened is that I was obviously fighting Checo, but I knew that Checo was going to give me a position quickly and he couldn’t fight me because he was going to give me a position back so in the end, we created a mess that for me is unnecessary, given the fact that we did six laps behind the safety car and there were millions of opportunities for Checo to let me by and have a good fight at the restart.

“If I would have get passed by Russell for example, what would we have done and would Checo have had to let by Russell and me, which would have been tremendously unfair for him too or then Checo doesn’t give me back the position because there’s Russell in between me and him and it’s tremendously unfair for me.

“So I don’t know, it’s just these kind of things that as a sport we need to keep getting better at because I think we need to simplify things and just make it more quicker and easier for everyone to understand and even for the drivers to go racing with a much clearer mind.”

Thinking he was ahead, Perez defended against Sainz at turn 2 to make absolutely sure he held P3.

Unfortunately for him, his team asked to give the position to Sainz after the restart. He duly obliged on the run to turn 4.

“I was trying obviously to block him, which is allowed, in terms of you are able to cross the Safety Car line. So I felt everything was done in all fairness,” said the 32-year-old.

“The team told me to give back, so I gave it back straight after the Safety Car. I mean, they have more information, inside the car you don’t know where you exactly are for safety car line one. So yeah, in that regard, I felt it was the right thing to do.”