Formula 1 sporting chief Ross Brawn says Formula 1 has to find a way of abandoning technical-related grid penalties which have an impact on a driver’s race.
Under current regulations, drivers receive five or 10-place penalties if they use more than four versions of any of the six components which make up the power unit.
Drivers are also handed a five-place sanction if their gearbox does not last for six successive events.
At last weekend's Belgian Grand Prix, six of the 20 drivers received a grid penalty, with only Felipe Massa picking up his for a driving transgression.
Brawn believes that F1 has to “find a solution” to address the “very unpopular” sanctions.
“I hate the fact that we're having to affect the racing because of the technical issues," Brawn said in an interview with Autosport.
"I know you can say if a car breaks down in a race that's a technical issue and you've affected the race, but I think the fans understand that.
"For a fan to stomach that his hero is on the back of the grid because he had to change the engine, that's not great sport.
"We've got to find a solution to that, either through a different form of penalty or to remove the penalty altogether and just live with the problem that it was trying to fix."
Brawn reckons that Formula 1 could implement “more discrete” penalties, which would affect a team rather than a driver.
"One of the things that has been suggested is loss of constructors' points,” he said.
"There could be other more discrete penalties.
"We used to have the token system for the engine, and that wasn't bad actually.
“It got a little bit complicated, but you could remove the tokens for a while.
"It needs a lateral think. The grid penalties are very unpopular, and we should be finding a better solution.”
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