Dieter Rencken believes that the penalty system needs some tweaking in the future, in order to ensure that serious incidents are given proper penalties. Speaking in light of Lewis Hamilton being given a ten second time penalty by stewards at Silverstone after being found predominantly at fault for the collision that took title rival Max Verstappen out of the race, Rencken told the RN365 F1 Podcast that he doesn't think this to be a sufficient penalty. "What I believe, is that we should have a penalty system which, first of all, doesn't just add on 10 seconds to a routine stop. That is hardly a penalty," Rencken told Thomas Maher. The penalty system, as it stands, allows the teams to take their penalties at their pit stops, enabling them to take the stop when it best suits them. Hamilton was able to build enough of a gap during the first stint to make his stop, serve his penalty, and still come out in fifth place. "Being able to choose when you want to stop by bolting it onto the back of your routine stop, as far as I'm concerned any penalty should be a 10 second stop and go in the pits, completely independently of any tyre change, then it's a penalty," Rencken said. "Until then, it's just a small slap on the wrist regardless of how serious the incident was in the first place." Asked whether he feels that maybe a 'sliding scale' of penalties could be a solution, with more severe penalties given to the faster teams due to their ability to overcome the loss more easily than weaker team, Rencken said that wouldn't be a feasible, or desirable, option. "Absolute no no, I don't know where that comes from. As far as I'm concerned, that would be a bit like saying, in football, if you have a penalty kick, give a weaker team two shots," he said. "I'm sorry, we're supposed to have a totally level playing field, Mercedes, Red Bull etc, have done a far better job than the rest, if they can benefit from it under a penalty or whatever, absolutely, that's their prerogative and congrats to them and good luck to them. "But I really don't believe that we should be having that. " Listen to the full new episode of the RacingNews365 F1 Podcast below!
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