Max Verstappen and Fernando Alonso were left bemused after the FIA clamped down on burnout celebrations at the finish line.
Last Sunday, the Dutchman slowed down to light up his rear tyres as he passed his Red Bull crew after taking victory at the Red Bull Ring.
But that earned him the scorn of FIA race director Michael Masi, who said such moves “would not be tolerated” in the future.
“I understand of course about safety but I looked in my mirrors, went all the way to the right and just did a burnout,” Verstappen, who joked that next time he’d “do a donut”, said when asked about the topic on Thursday.
“I won’t do it again, but at the time I thought it was really funny and safe, but of course I understand they [the FIA] don’t want to see this happening again, which is fine for me.”
Previously, the FIA has been called out for being spoilsports after penalising past drivers who did post-race celebrations, although did relax their view a little bit as a result.
Whether this new warning applies to all celebrations, such as donuts in run-off areas is not yet clear, but Verstappen did have some other ideas… sort of.
“Yeah, bungee jumping, cage fighting, back-flips with the car, the FIA likes that you think, or not?” he said mockingly.
“Maybe we can improve it. Maybe we get some bonus points as well, that would be great!”
Next to him in the press conference at the Red Bull Ring was Fernando Alonso, who similarly thought the stewards had their focus on the wrong thing.
”This burnout, I think it was nice to watch. Even the donuts, in Abu Dhabi, I think the fans like that and you see a lot of videos of those moments on social media and so on,” commented the Spaniard.
“I think the FIA should police more the track limits. [Last weekend] I was the only one making a move into turn one at the start and the two cars that I overtook missed turn one and they exited in front of me. No warnings on that but there is for the burnout.”
The reason for the banning of the celebration is to prevent a repeat of what happened to Nicholas Latifi ironically at the Red Bull Ring in Formula Renault 3.5 back in 2015, when he crashed into race winner Roberto Merhi while racing Tom Dillmann across the finish line.
Perhaps even more ironically, it was the Canadian who was the first car behind Verstappen as he took the chequered flag last Sunday too.
“Obviously, when I went over the finish line I saw Max pulling to the inside, so I just made sure to stay as far to the left as possible,” he explained.
“I guess in general it’s not the best thing to really, really slow down that much. I mean, in that situation there were no cars directly behind him that were racing. That wasn’t the situation all those years ago.
“I was racing with another car quite close and as a result, I had my eyes in my mirrors and was not expecting a car to be stopped right in front of me on the grid. It can end very badly, as we saw back in 2015.
“There needs to be a bit of a compromise in that sense. Obviously, Michael [Masi] thought it was dangerous so I don’t think other cars will be doing that in future. It is probably best not to slow down that much.”