FIA race director Charlie Whiting asserted that while Esteban Ocon was entitled to un-lap himself in Sunday's Brazilian Grand Prix, he should have refrained from fighting the race leader.
Ocon's wheel-to-wheel battle with Max Verstappen on lap 44 resulted in a contact and a spin for both drivers, and a costly demotion to second from first for the Red Bull driver.
The Frenchman was handed a 10-penalty for his ill-timed maneuver which Whiting later justified by both agreeing and objecting to the Force India driver's behavior.
"He’s absolutely allowed to un-lap himself. That’s clear. It’s happened many times in the past," explained Whiting, quoted by Racefans.net.
"Of course you would expect it to be done safely. But more to the point it should be done cleanly and absolutely without fighting. He shouldn’t be fighting to get past.
"If he’s got the pace then normally one would expect Red Bull to say ‘Ocon’s got the pace, just let him through’, that sort of thing.
"But it seemed that he just went for it and it was a bit unfortunate that he decided to fight for it which was wholly unacceptable."
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Many considered Ocon's penalty as rather lenient given the fact that the run-in had involved the race leader, but Whiting said the stewards were rightly not influenced by Verstappen's status.
"I don’t think it makes any difference that he was a leader," he said.
"It makes it worse in a lot of people’s eyes but as far as the stewards are concerned that doesn’t matter."
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