Niki Lauda furious at FIA for giving Vettel a five second penalty

Niki Lauda has voiced his opinion and believes the penalty Vettel received for crashing into Valtteri Bottas wasn’t strong enough. However, Charlie Whiting has since defended the reasons behind the chosen penalty. 

Vettel went into the back of Bottas at the start of the Grand Prix. Bottas spun around and rejoined the pack at the back, whilst Vettel escaped with a broken nose. After his nose job, he received a five-second penalty. 

“Why did Vettel only get five seconds for a huge mistake?” Niki Lauda asked in an interview on one-stop strategy. 

“Five seconds is nothing. It destroyed Valtteri’s race. We could have had first and second places.”

Charlie Whiting then went on to add the reasoning behind the stewards' decision. As always, he was there to back his team up. 

"The stewards had four options," he revealed. "A 5-second penalty, a 10-second penalty, a drive-through and a stop and go,” said Whiting. 

"5 seconds seems logical given other incidents of this kind in the past. If you take into consideration the consequences of the incident, you could argue that it should have been different, but that's not what the stewards did."

What do you think? Are you agreeing with Niki Lauda or Charlie Whiting? Vote in the poll and let us know in the comments!