McLaren team principal Andrea Stella expressed his disappointment regarding Kevin Magnussen’s way of racing during the Miami Sprint Race.
The Haas driver was defending from Lewis Hamilton to try to score points for the team. However, the way he did that was against the sportsmanship rules, considers Stella.
The Danish driver did receive penalties for what he did on the track, with a total of 35 seconds added to his race. Despite that, the McLaren team principal believes that type of behavior isn’t acceptable in F1.
“We have a case of behavior being intentional in terms of damaging another competitor and this behavior is perpetuated within the same race and repeated over the same season,” Stella said.
“How can penalties be accumulative? They should be exponential. It is not five plus five plus five equals 15.
“Five plus five plus five equals maybe you need to spend a weekend at home with your family and reflect on your sportsmanship and then go back…
“It is completely unacceptable. It makes no sense from a sportsmanship point of view and this should be addressed immediately.
“If you are out of the points, getting 20 seconds or whatever doesn’t make any difference. But for the competitors you have damaged, you have put them out of their race in a deliberate, perpetuated, and repeated way.”
Stella hopes that, since Magnussen already used similar tactics in Jeddah, the FIA will look into the matter and fix the problem with new rules.
“I am sure the FIA will look into that and will come to a sensible proposal for the Sporting Advisory Committee to evaluate. Hopefully, these will soon become rules or guidelines that the stewards can apply.”