Haas team boss Guenther Steiner believes there should be a rule in Formula 1 which states that 50/50 penalty decisions should be ignored by the stewards.
Asked for his opinion on Sebastian Vettel's penalty in Canada – which is currently under review – Steiner believes there was both an argument for penalising the Ferrari driver and one for putting it down as a racing incident, but reckons overall given how on the edge it was, it should simply have been ignored.
"How I see it, it's 50/50 and it can go both ways. And if it's a 50/50, I [would] go without the penalty as I always say," he said on Thursday ahead of this weekend's French Grand Prix.
"Whether it's against us or for us, we shouldn't over-regulate it. If it's a 50/50 decision, let it go. That should be the clear decision in my opinion.
"If it's 60/40, again it's very close. But it was a 50/50 in my opinion and it was proper racing. It was pretty cool and in the end he got the penalty and they [Ferrari] need to deal with it, I have no input there thank god. It's a bit of a contentious one."
Steiner believes Ferrari's decision to push for a review of the penalty will create "confusion", but also believes it could serve as a wake-up call to the stewards and force them to rethink how and why certain penalties are given.
"I wouldn't say it's dangerous but if you set a precedent, you start doing it for doing its sake," he added. "You create confusion."
"But I think Ferrari felt they need to do it and at some stage I think the stewards need to be reminded that this can happen, and it's not good.
"When you make decisions and you don't know what to do because it's a 50/50, they should not give a penalty, because Mercedes could not come back and demand a penalty. That is not in the rules. If there is no penalty given you cannot go back and demand a penalty for somebody."
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