FIA asked teams & drivers about F1 penalties

The FIA has asked F1's ten team bosses and 20 drivers for their opinions about how on-track incidents should be penalised. In Hungary, race director Michael Masi presented them with an anonymous questionnaire about 12 controversial incidents over the past few years.

It follows intense discussions over how often the stewards intervene with penalties after on-track clashes, such as the one that cost Sebastian Vettel victory in Canada.

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner told Auto Motor und Sport that he voted for "no further action" in 90 per cent of the questionnaire's cases. "One of them was Vettel and Hamilton in Montreal," he said. "For me, that wasn't a penalty."

Indeed, after Canada, Ferrari requested an official 'review' of the penalty, and sporting boss Laurent Mekies thinks that was instrumental to the FIA's change of direction. "Since then we have seen several exciting races," he told Corriere della Sera.

"We did not go to the stewards after the incident between Leclerc and Verstappen in Austria, because these tough fights are exactly what we want to see in Formula 1."

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Leopold

Leopold Pleijsier founded F1-Fansite.com in 2001 and has followed Formula 1 since the early 1980s. He writes about daily F1 news, race weekends, drivers and the sport’s history.

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