“What I want is a referee, who either immediately announces a penalty or, as in football, shows a yellow card. For certain offenses you get a red card, for others a yellow. Once you have a certain number of yellow cards you are banned from the next race,” said Ecclestone.
Nevertheless, the 77-year old Englishman pointed out that handing those yellow/red cards should be very carefully managed so it doesn't affect the spectacle of the sport. If one driver gets too many of those penalties, his racing ability and confidence would be affected.
“We must be very careful that we don't punish every little thing, otherwise the drivers lose the confidence to try to fight,” concluded Bernie.
And here is where the drivers come in, as most of them agree that putting a former F1 driver up there with the race stewards would most likely improve the quality of their decisions and would help them in making little or no mistakes whatsoever. In light of the latest Japanese Grand Prix, when the race officials handed a couple of controversial penalties to Sebastien Bourdais and Lewis Hamilton, many drivers asked for a revision in the stewards system.
Honda's Jenson Button actually pointed out that F1 should appoint former racers to step in and help the decisional process when giving penalties in a race but added that “having an experienced driver on board would help, but not one from 15 to 20 years ago because so much has changed. We need someone who has been involved in the sport and knows about this problem of going off the circuit and coming back on”.
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