Horner disagrees with Verstappen's 'almost unprecedented' penalty

Horner: 'FIA needs to talk to F1 drivers'

"Max didn't leave the track at turn four. Then at seven, Lando opened the door very late. They both ran off there. But the problem is, I think we're going to get into very dangerous territory of at what point is a dive bomb going to be okay. So I think really the FIA and the drivers need to sit down and decide what is acceptable and what isn't. I thought two ten seconds was a bit on the hard side today," Horner said in a conversation with Sky Sports.

"It’s almost unprecedented," he added at Viaplay. "We'll look at it, we'll try and understand how the rules are being applied. Max didn't run off the track at turn four. It was very strange."

Asked by Sky for his reaction to Zak Brown's comments, who denounced Verstappen for his 'ridiculous' driving, Horner replied: "You’ve always got to play to the rules. We’ll look and learn from this race. I think more important for us, on Saturday we just didn’t have the pace. We had good pace in quali yesterday but our race pace was nowhere compared to the Ferrari and McLaren. That's really where our focus will be over the next five days."

Verstappen still has a 47-point lead over Norris in the drivers' championship, but in the constructors' championship, McLaren and Ferrari in particular are currently doing well. Horner, however, is not giving up yet. "Well, of course. We've got to keep pushing and we’ve got to understand what the swing in performance was in the race today. At the moment it seems just crucial that tyres are so sensitive. If you're not in the right operating window, you're nowhere," Horner said.

This article has been created in collaboration with Matt Gretton