Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull boss Christian Horner have both declared Formula 1 is over-regulated.
The past three races have seen the stewards in the spotlight after a penalty took victory away from the Ferrari driver in Canada and a decision not to penalise meant Max Verstappen kept the win in Austria.
It has sparked a debate about the state of today’s sporting regulations, which the FIA has argued is a result of the teams pushing for clearer boundaries, but Horner believes it has now gone too far.
“It is clear in the rules from what I have seen, at that point, he [Verstappen] is ahead, it’s his corner,” the Red Bull chief said reflecting on the Austria incident with Charles Leclerc.
“If you take that to an extreme, we saw cars going off and coming back on, every single move would be penalised. What would be the point of trying to overtake?
“I think we’re over-regulated anyway, but I think the right decision was made and we’re happy with that. Are there too many rules in F1? Yes.
“They came to the conclusion of no further action, I think that was the right decision.”
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Vettel hasn’t been shy in admitting his displeasure with F1 compared to when he first joined the grid a decade ago and was pretty blunt as he echoed his former boss.
“I think the problem is now we have so many rules [that F1 is] trying to put in writing what you can’t put in writing,” he said.
“It’s just a bit of a mess, I can’t think of any other sport where case by case, things are exactly the same.
“Things are always a bit different. And in our sport, it’s difficult to put everything and every possible outcome in writing. We need to simplify and give freedom to race each other.”
Following the anxious wait for a stewards’ decision in Spielberg, Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko even suggested a penalty for Verstappen would have had the company questioning their F1 future.
“If the victory had been taken from us, that would certainly have had an impact,” he told Motorsport-Total.
“We were not speaking concretely about what we would do, but we [would have] said: ‘So Formula 1 is not interesting.’
“There you can use the words of Max when he said: ‘We may as well stay at home.'”
