'Too many penalties'

Gerhard Berger

"There are too many penalties; too many guilty ones," former race winner and Toro Rosso co-owner Gerhard Berger said after Sunday's Japanese grand prix.

Not only were championship contenders Felipe Massa and Lewis Hamilton on the receiving end of the stewards' deliberations, Toro Rosso's Sebastien Bourdais lost his points for colliding with Massa after a pitstop.

"What am I supposed to do?" the Frenchman said. "Roll out the red carpet?"

Lewis Hamilton's drive-through penalty for pushing Kimi Raikkonen wide at the first corner surprised his McLaren chiefs.

"We've all seen similar first corner incidents that triggered no such penalty," Ron Dennis noted.

BMW-Sauber's Nick Heidfeld was less convinced, pointing the finger at Hamilton rather than FIA officials.

"I thought Hamilton would have learnt his lesson from last year," the German driver told motorsports-magazine.com.

"He was told by his team in the last race to go steady. As far as I can see from the replay, the scrap on the first corner wasn't necessary."

Toyota's Jarno Trulli is apparently also unimpressed, vowing to ask Hamilton at the Shanghai drivers' briefing why he ignored blue flags at Fuji for more than a lap.

Massa, meanwhile, penalized for the incident at turn 10, hit back at intimations that he deliberately punted Hamilton into a spin.

"In my opinion it was a normal running accident," said the Brazilian.