McLaren CEO Zak Brown says Formula 1 must avoid a repeat of the track limits “mishap” that occurred at the Austrian Grand Prix last weekend.
A number of drivers were penalised during the race for going over the white lines.
However, after the chequered flag, Aston Martin protested the classification and claimed that there were a number of breaches that had gone undetected by the stewards.
Eight drivers were issued time penalties several hours after the chequered flag, with Carlos Sainz being the biggest loser as he dropped from fourth to sixth
Speaking to Sky Sports News, Brown said: ”There was definitely a better solution than what happened.
“That being said, it’s a track that’s unique and I’ve never seen track limits like that before.
“I think we as a sport can do a better job of, when the race results come out, those are the race results. I can see how it happened, I just think we need to anticipate a little bit better as we already knew on Friday it was going to be a challenge.
“I think there are a variety of ways to address it moving forward. What is most important is that when we have a mishap, we learn from it and we don’t let it happen again.
“We need to make sure it never happens again, and that we do a proper debrief and understand how we could have prevented it in the first place or handled it differently.”
The FIA stated that it reasserted its wish to the Austrian GP promoter to install measures to avoid such a situation recurring in the future.
Brown commended the FIA for facing the scenario head-on rather than brushing it under the carpet.
“I’ll take my hat off to the FIA for addressing the issue and I think it would have been easy to say, ‘this is going to cause a lot of noise, let’s just kind of get it right next time’,” he said.
“For them to put their hands up and say there were some penalties that needed to be addressed, I thought that was a brave decision.
“But we can’t have it again. We can’t have a race and then five hours later you have that degree of change in the result.”
The drivers can solve the problem by staying between the lines. Several drivers did precisely that. If all of them did it there would be no problems. Don’t blame the stewards because your drivers cannot stay on the track.