Kimi Antonelli believes his collision with Oscar Piastri in the Brazilian GP could have been deemed as a "racing incident" but that a penalty was the correct decision.
On the early safety car restart in Sao Paulo, Piastri attempted to go three-wide into Turn 1 and dive up the inside of Antonelli's Mercedes in the middle and Charles Leclerc's Ferrari on the outside.
Piastri locked up, collided with the Mercedes, which in turn destroyed the front-left suspension of the Ferrari, eliminating Leclerc.
For this, Piastri received a standard 10-second penalty for causing a collision and two penalty points, as he finished in fifth. Without the 10-second delay, the Australian would have finished second to team-mate Lando Norris, clawing back eight points.
As it was, Norris's victory with Piastri's fifth meant the gap ballooned to 24 points instead of the 16 it would have otherwise been.
Reflecting on the incident two weeks on, Antonelli felt it was a fair sanction for Piastri given the way the racing guidelines are currently written.
"If you stand by the driving guidelines, Oscar was wrong, and they still stand by the guidelines, and that's why the penalty was given," Antonelli explained when asked by RacingNews365 for his thoughts on Piastri's penalty, two weeks on.
"In Zandvoort, I was penalised, and it was a bit different, but the dynamic was the same. I was not fully alongside in Zandvoort and collided with Charles, and got my penalty.
"With Oscar, yes, it was approaching the braking, he was alongside me, but when we braked, he broke much earlier than me, and was not fully alongside as his front wing was at the back of my wheel, and then we were three-wide, which is never easy.
"Everything happened so quickly, and I was trying to give space to Charles because I had Oscar inside me, but then obviously in the braking, I didn't see him anymore because he broke so much earlier than me.
"He locked up, and I closed the corner a bit, and we collided, but it wasn't a lucky situation.
"If we stand by the guidelines, the penalty is fair because he wasn't at my mirror. Maybe it was a racing incident because the situation was tricky, but the rules are this.
"That's why in Qatar we will discuss [the guidelines] for the future, and try to make it better."
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