Should the Formula One watching public have any sympathy for Daniil Kvyat?
At the British Grand Prix the Toro Rosso team-mates of Kvyat and Carlos Sainz collided on the opening lap.
The incident looked a rather messy one, with Russian Kvyat losing control of his car when he put his wheel off the track, on a corner where he was never going to complete the manoeuvre on his Spanish team-mate.
The resulting collision saw Sainz, who has been heavily linked with leaving the Red Bull Racing stable retire from the race.
Kvyat was initially able to continue, before he was forced to retire due to the damage he had sustained in the incident.
This however came after he was handed a penalty by the British Grand Prix race stewards.
It?s pretty clear that stewards are far more lenient on driver behaviour in 2017, this is obvious when incidents involving Sebastian Vettel, Max Verstappen and Valterri Bottas aren?t even investigated, and when in years gone by a penalty could have been handed to the driver.
Many could argue that whilst Kvyat was at fault for the crash, under the new guidelines was it not just a racing incident?
Well in the eyes of the stewards, Kvyat wasn?t penalised for causing a collision.
He instead was handed a drive through penalty and two points on his super licence for leaving the track and re-joining unsafely and colliding with Sainz.
Kvyat gets 2 penalty points on his super licence. Now up to 9 in total and 12 brings a ban. #SkyF1 #F1 #BritishGP pic.twitter.com/hifXbLA2tY
? William Esler (@WilliamEsler) July 16, 2017
The two penalty points leaves him perilously close to serving a race ban before October.
Was that decision harsh? He was undoubtedly to blame for the crash, but should it have actually been penalised in the way it was?
‘My frustration is because of the penalty ? [the] stewards say you race you race and then this thing happens. My race is damaged, his race is damaged, and they penalise me. I don’t know what they are looking for there.’ Kvyat told motorsport.com .
?A drive-through is a drive-through, it?s an extremely strong [punishment].
?I saw stronger incidents and they punish five or 10 seconds [added to] the pitstop. For me I believe [they should] keep doing that. Kvyat told motorsport.com .
