Martin Brundle urges F1 to solve "unacceptable" issue

Italian Grand Prix

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Brundle urges F1 to solve "unacceptable" issue

Brundle has offered his own solutions

Ewan Gale

Tuesday 13 September 2022 09:15 Updated: 11:19

Martin Brundle has insisted the FIA and F1 must find a solution to the "unacceptable" qualifying penalty confusion that has marred two of the past three races.

With multiple drivers taking engine penalties at the Belgian Grand Prix, the qualifying results were hardly recognisable from the race day grid.

Charles Leclerc took pole at Monza on Saturday but was the only driver to start in the same place he had finished the qualifying session, with nine drivers taking a drop down the grid.

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The confusion of having different levels of penalisation resulted in a four-hour wait for a provisional grid to be published, leaving fans confused and drivers taking to social media to ask if supporters knew where they would be starting.

Speaking in his punditry role for Sky Sports F1, Brundle slated the situation and said: "It is unacceptable.

"It is two of the last three races where you watch qualifying and then the grid looks completely different the next day.

"It is not acceptable at all.

"There are ways of doing it. There is too much of a penalty for a driver, who is taking something outside his control with power units, maybe it blew up in the previous race and they lost positions there as well - a double jeopardy."

On potential solutions, former F1 driver Brundle suggested: "Maybe leave the grid as it is and those who have power units take a drive-through as a penalty, but the driver is still taking the pain on that one.

"My idea is a rising scale percentage of constructors' points so the constructors upfront would take more pain if it was a percentage of points.

"Somehow, you have got to dissuade the big teams from throwing power units in every weekend. There has to be some kind of control function in that but this clearly is no good for the fans and they are the reason we are here."