On the face of it, the suggestion seems highly plausible. The McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were excluded from the results of the Las Vegas Grand Prix because the wear on some of their underfloor skid plates was fractionally beyond the permitted tolerance.
Team boss Andrea Stella's contention is that in this case, the punishment didn't fit the crime.
"Unlike sporting or financial rules," he said in a Q&A the team released ahead of the Qatar GP weekend, "there is no proportionality in the application of penalties for technical regulation infringements.
"The FIA itself has admitted that this lack of proportionality should be addressed in the future to ensure that minor and accidental technical infringements, with minimal or no performance benefits, do not lead to disproportionate consequences.
"It should also be remembered that the FIA itself emphasised that the infringement was not intentional, there was no deliberate attempt to circumvent the regulations, and there were also mitigating circumstances, as we explained to the event stewards."
This was a point the stewards acknowledged in their findings, while pointing out that there is no threshold for mitigation and no leeway for a minor infringement. Other competitors sympathised to an extent – as they would, given that the excess wear was but 0.12mm on Norris's rear skid plate and 0.26mm on Piastri's – but still shied away from supporting the idea of relaxing the punishment.
