Nico Hulkenberg has stringently defended his Haas team-mate Kevin Magnussen over what he thinks is a “harsh” Formula 1 race ban for the Dane.
Magnussen was awarded a 10-second time penalty for a collision with Alpine’s Pierre Gasly during the Italian GP at Monza and two penalty points were added to the Haas driver’s FIA Super License once the race had concluded.
The Race Stewards’ decision meant Magnussen accumulated the 12 points in a 365-day period to warrant a race ban meaning Ollie Bearman is racing alongside Hulkenberg in the Azerbaijan GP at Baku.
Gasly himself didn’t see the reason for Magnussen’s penalty at Monza, with neither driver adversely affected by the incident and it is an opinion shared by Hulkenberg.
“I didn’t see two penalty points in that, and a 10-second penalty is very harsh in my opinion, and most drivers feel the same way about that,” Hulkenberg told media on Thursday (via RN365).
“I had a case with Fernando [Alonso] in the Austria sprint race where I tried to make a move into Turn 3, locked up, went wide and he had to go off the track, but that is racing.
“To overtake, we have to leave our comfort zone, and take some risks and then this kind of thing happens sometimes.
“In my case with Fernando, and also with Pierre, both drivers said: ‘It’s nothing’ so it seems that whenever there is a little bit of contact, the stewards want to get involved, they want to have a consequence for it.
“The drivers feel that it isn’t really necessary for every contact so maybe the penalty guidelines need to be reviewed and changed because we need to be able to race and it is just difficult otherwise.
“It will be boring and dull as we can’t race anymore, we’ll just get penalised all the time, but I am sure it will come up in the driver’s meeting, and there will be talks with Niels Wittich.”
Alonso, like Gasly, was strongly opposed to Magnussen’s race ban and the Spaniard was quick to criticise the penalty points system when questioned on the matter at Monza.
The Aston Martin driver felt that penalty points are applied too readily and should be reserved for outwardly dangerous situations.
Again, Hulkenberg was on a similar wavelength to his rivals when he was probed on the matter at Baku on Thursday.
“It is for extreme cases, and if drivers do something silly or dangerous, it is good to keep us under control and we know there is a consequence if we do something stupid or silly, so I think it should stay in place,” the German said of the penalty points system.
“Monza is the most recent one, it is fresh in our memory, but [Magnussen’s penalty points] didn’t start from zero this year.”
Hulkenberg concluded by saying Magnussen’s ban is a result of “an accumulation of things,” adding the penalty points are good “for extreme cases, but with all these little racing incidents, it is tricky and a fine line.”
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