Brundle criticises the FIA: 'This is an unacceptable situation'

Martin Brundle has expressed his frustration with the current grid penalty system in Formula 1. According to the Sky Sports analyst, it is ridiculous that fans have to wait hours for confirmation of the actual starting grid for Sunday.

A total of seven drivers were forced to take a grid penalty for the Italian Grand Prix. This created a lot of confusion after qualifying, as nobody knew what the grid would look like on Sunday. Even the FIA seemed to have no idea, as it took hours for the provisional starting grid to come online.

In the end, the grid on Sunday did not match the result of qualifying at all. "This is an unacceptable situation because when the fans turn up trackside or switch on their TV sets to watch qualifying, they should reasonably expect that they're watching the race grid being formed. Instead we waited for several hours for the tortuous and complex process of how penalties were applied", Brundle writes in his column for Sky Sports.

According to the Brit, F1 needs to find solutions to prevent teams from constantly needing new engines. According to Brundle, the sport could give each driver more power units per season or apply a penalty during the race, such as a drive-through. "In the multi-billion dollar world of F1 it looks ridiculous that the teams appear to be short of engines, which of course they're not."