If Rosberg was too harsh F1 should ban overtaking

Load gun. Aim at foot. Pull trigger. Formula 1 is very good at that process sometimes.

F1's fight to enhance the show is ongoing. So it could do without discouraging drivers from doing things that are quite interesting on track.

Moments of genuine inspiration are few and far between in the modern age of grand prix racing, so punishing a driver on a rare occasion they were pushing the boundaries seems rather arse-about-face.

It was hard not to weep for competitive motorsport when Nico Rosberg was handed a 10-second time penalty for bumping into the side of Kimi Raikkonen while executing a bold move in the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Drivers shouldn't be completely carefree when it comes to to barging past rivals but on-the-limit passes are part of the spectacle. Clumsy, dangerous driving isn't - and this was very much the right side of on-the-limit.

It wasn't exactly a last-second lunge - Rosberg had gone deeper into Turn 1, held the car in the middle of the road as the corner tightened and the intention to dive to the inside was clear the moment he straightened up for Turn 2.

He would have made the corner had Raikkonen not turned in, so was not out of control by a long way. The contact occurred because Raikkonen turned into the corner and the gap disappeared - not that the Finn was wrong to turn in, he just had no idea Rosberg was down his inside.

That kind of collision is pretty much the definition of a racing incident. The fact Raikkonen was so caught out is the brilliance at the heart of the Rosberg pass.

There a nice blend of inventiveness and execution, and it's hardly the first time the layout of Turns 1 and 2 at Sepang has prompted such a move. Even though the elevation change isn't as severe as it once was, it's not exactly the most shocking of places for a pass to occur - and how much Raikkonen was caught out should also be questioned to a degree.

This isn't a declaration that anyone who gets down the inside of their rival 'has' the corner. Of course it is possible to come from a long way back and, by dint of being out of control, reach the apex level with the car you'd sail clean past if you didn't slam into.

But that's not what happened here.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff was always going to side with his driver post-race, branding the penalty "complete nonsense", but he also highlighted that encouraging racing between drivers was what F1 supposedly wanted to achieve.

"A couple of months ago we decided all together that we wanted to allow racing between all the cars and if it wasn't 100% clear that someone was at fault then we would let them race against each other," he said.

"And then this."

Wolff's right. The fact there was contact lends weight to the anti-Rosberg argument with this particular incident, but what are we doing here if we're going to ping drivers for a little bit of rubbing with negligible negative consequences?

That is another significant point. Rosberg's tried, and pulled off, an inventive move at a slow speed. The only hindrance to either driver was Raikkonen sustaining a little bit of damage - unfortunate, of course, but it didn't change the Finn's result, let alone ruin his race.

The way Rosberg executed the move and the speed at which it occurred meant that small amount of contact was about as worst-case scenario as it was going to get.

But as Rosberg was penalised for it, are we to believe that is worse than swerving at 200mph and moving in the braking zone?

Don't take this as an attempt to follow the example set by a few F1 drivers in recent weeks and turn this into an anti-Max Verstappen moan. But inconsistency from the stewards means F1 has bordered on setting a problematic precedent.

In Hungary and Belgium, officials deemed Verstappen did not warrant punishment for his moves while fighting Raikkonen - the sort of moves that Jenson Button, after the Hungary incident, branded "the most dangerous thing you can do" in F1.

Whether you think Verstappen didn't break any rules "as written", as Fernando Alonso pointed out after the Spa incident, is one thing. The principle is another - two acts that could have resulted in something pretty catastrophic went unpunished. Verstappen just got a talking to.

It is wrong that Rosberg was slapped with an immediate in-race penalty for a considerably lesser offence, even once you take into account that Rosberg being the aggressor led to contact.

If the stewards genuinely thought there was something to investigate, they should have taken their time with it. Maybe then they'd have been a bit less trigger-happy in their decision-making.

It's also odd that article 38.1 of the FIA's sporting regulation states: "Unless it was completely clear that a driver was in breach...any incidents involving more than one car will normally be investigated after the race."

How the Rosberg/Raikkonen clash can be described as a "completely clear" incident is difficult to see. It's not like Rosberg's hamfisted attempt at blocking Verstappen in Germany, when he just failed to turn in after getting down the inside of the Red Bull into the hairpin and ran it off the road.

It actually occupies a similar area of grey to the first-corner clashes Rosberg's had with team-mate Lewis Hamilton on more than one occasion.

And if we're going to subject rare wheel-to-wheel action to such vicious nit-picking, can we expect anything other than conservatism?

Why not just ban overtaking altogether to avoid any similar issues? Or keep passes contained to the end of DRS zones, to make it as easy and bland as possible?

Even if you reign that tongue-in-cheek suggestion in - F1's most interesting moments in three years of Mercedes domination have come from aggressive driving that occupied that grey area between right and wrong.

Hamilton's aggression with Rosberg on the opening laps at Suzuka and Austin last season and Montreal this set an obvious tone and the Briton came under fire from some over his conduct.

But the prevailing opinion was the incidents were hard but just about fair, and Rosberg shouldn't let himself be bullied in those scenarios.

So why was he then hung out by the stewards to dry in this instance?

Admittedly it was a mid-race clash, not something into Turn 1 on the opening lap. That's usually a free pass, unless an accident occurs as the result of something obviously malicious or stupid.

But here, Rosberg should be praised for being inventive and not just sitting behind and waiting to boringly blast past on a straight. He saw an opportunity showed the sort of decisiveness he's often accused of lacking.

"I went for it and we touched and that's it," said Rosberg afterwards. "It was an aggressive move and they judged it to be a bit too aggressive."

There was surprise in some quarters that Rosberg opted to be so aggressive given he'd already clawed his way back up to fifth - having thought his race was "all over" after dropping to 17th when he was taken off at the first corner by an errant Sebastian Vettel.

But risk is part of the game, especially when there's a championship on the line. At the time, Hamilton was easing to victory - Rosberg had performed a decent exercise in damage limitation, but every place is valuable when you consider how quickly the tide has turned in the intra-team battle this season.

Rosberg would have picked up 12 points for finishing fourth; instead he banked 15 as Hamilton registered a non-score. Even if Hamilton hadn't retired and earned the win he looked so likely to clinch, Rosberg would have lost 13 points to his team-mate instead of 15 points.

On the evidence of this season, such fine margins could be crucial. And more power to Rosberg for not accepting his lot.

He admitted that he "didn't think I was going to get a penalty at the time" and said he accepted the decision and was "fortunate that it didn't cost me anything in the race".

But, going back to setting precedents, what if something similar happens in the finale? What if a legitimate, hard - but probably fair - overtake results in a penalty for either Hamilton or Rosberg, on the grounds of consistency?

If would be ridiculous if that happened and it affected the title battle.

The hope also has to be that if Rosberg finds himself in wheel-to-wheel combat with Hamilton with the title on the line, this incident hasn't spooked him.

Rosberg, rightly or wrongly, has developed a reputation of being a soft touch. That has always given Hamilton a psychological edge when they've gone head-to-head; he's always looked more assured.

But if Rosberg repeats the level of decisiveness and aggression from Malaysia, Hamilton will have a harder time conquering a driver he's always looked to have the edge on in battle.