09/09/2019
NEWS STORY
The tifosi had already had enough upsets, what with Sebastian Vettel's unforced spin at the Ascari chicane - the TV director insisting on showing the crowd's reaction rather than what the German was actually doing - so the idea of handing Charles Leclerc any sort of penalty for his robust tactics was surely unthinkable.
Mercedes boss, Toto Wolff, while sympathising with the stewards' plight, admits concern that the recent practice of giving drivers a 'yellow card', might well open the floodgates.
"They are in a very difficult situation, to come up with the right decisions, that are not always clear cut," said the Austrian.
"I know you want to have some more spicy stuff and I just said to Martin Brundle, I have enough of my own problems to solve that I don't want to have Michael Masi's problems on top of that.
"The racing was very hard, maybe over the line," he continued, "and Lewis, I think, was instrumental in not making it an incident.
"But at the end of the day, what do you do? You give a leading Ferrari in Monza a five-second penalty? Out of the question, because then we need a police escort out of here.
"There will be more cars touching," he said of the move towards giving drivers a black-and-white flag, which essentially says; 'we're watching you', "it will be more of a common practice.
"In my opinion it's going to go to the point that it will end up again in a collision, and then we're going to bail out of it again, or crawl back. This is the modus operandi. Until then, we let them race."