The stewards’ decision to penalise Sebastian Vettel in Canada is a result of Formula 1 striving for perfect regulations, says Alex Wurz.
There has been widespread disillusionment with the five-second ruling given to the Ferrari driver for pushing Lewis Hamilton towards the wall as he rejoined the track during Sunday’s race.
However, the argument made in defence of the stewards is that, by the letter of the regulations, Vettel did unsafely rejoin the track even if he did not intend to.
“We want rules for each and every thing and that’s where we arrived,” Wurz, who is the director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association told the BBC.
“Each and everyone in the system who thinks this penalty is not justified is at fault because over the years, with all these incidents and cases, the drivers and team managers asked the FIA in the open way of discussion for clarification of what is allowed and not, right down to millimetre and micrometre movements.
“In this whole process over the years, that is where we arrived.”
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Because of the push for black and white regulations on all on-track racing scenarios, the Austrian says the days where each incident is case-by-case are “gone”.
“It is hard to blame the FIA and the stewards for this, and this is what I don’t like in the conversation, that it goes a bit personal in this whole debate,” he continued.
“We are an industry that strives for the ultimate perfection, advantage or disadvantage, penalty or no penalty. So we arrive at such a situation.
“One struggles almost to judge one situation without having to refer to six or 10 other similar situations.
“In reality, each and every situation is different because there are so many influences.”
Ferrari is currently in the process of appealing the penalty given to Vettel, with a deadline of Thursday to submit new evidence.
Sky Sports commentator Martin Brundle isn’t holding out much hope for the Scuderia, however.
“This duel should have been allowed to run and hopefully remedy itself, and then calmly considered post-race,” he wrote in his post-race blog.
“I cannot see how the penalty can be unravelled now, otherwise Mercedes will claim they would have pushed harder to overtake.”