Marko: 'FIA would have given Verstappen a ten second penalty in that case'

A week after the Bahrain Grand Prix Helmut Marko looked back on the position Max Verstappen had to give back to Lewis Hamilton after his overtaking action just outside the track. It was unclear what was allowed and what wasn't and Helmut Marko has a solution for that. According to the Austrian, the run-off lanes should be smaller.

"Oh well, he had also made up a lot of time in the laps before that and Hamilton's tires were pretty much down. The point is just that: a five-second lead would still not have been a guarantee of victory," Marko told Motorsport-Total.com.

The Red Bull advisor went on to say that his stable were convinced that the stewards would always have decided that Mercedes driver Hamilton would take the win.

Hamilton would always have won

If Verstappen had driven far enough away after overtaking Hamilton, in all likelihood the FIA 's race committee would have handed out a higher penalty.

"If Max was 5.8 seconds ahead, for example, they would have given us a ten-second time penalty. From that perspective, it wouldn't have helped to stay on the track ahead of Hamilton."

Red Bull's pit wall was immediately told by Michael Masi that Verstappen would have to overtake the spot on the track after Turn 4, when this was precisely the spot where Hamilton himself had gone off-track 29 times in the previous laps. It was very unclear what was allowed and what wasn't in terms of track limits, and that bothered Marko.

Marko advises wall

He does have a solution though. "It just happened this way, but it is completely unnecessary. There is more than enough space there. If we just put a wall there, it's solved. Anyone who crashes into the wall damages their own car. I don't understand why we have so many run-off lanes on circuits and why we don't create a clear boundary," Marko concluded.