Vettel wants to ‘burn’ the rulebook after Ferrari loses appeal

Sebastian Vettel says he wants to “burn the papers” and has criticised Formula 1 for being over-regulated after Ferrari lost its appeal to review his Canadian Grand Prix penalty.

Ferrari lodged a right to review request to re-examine the controversial incident involving Vettel and Lewis Hamilton in Canada which resulted in the German receiving a five-second time penalty for rejoining the circuit in an unsafe manner.

The penalty dropped Vettel behind Hamilton into second place but despite Ferrari claiming it had “overwhelming” new evidence to present to the stewards during a hearing on Friday ahead of this weekend’s French Grand Prix, the Scuderia’s request was rejected.

Asked what he would change to avoid similar situations in future, Vettel joked: “Retire? At least I know I’m not in trouble again. I’m joking. I don’t really care.

Vettel added that he feels “everybody is to blame” for the current state of affairs in the sport and suggested the rulebook needs looking at.

“Everybody is to blame,” he said. “The problem is we are hurt with these things. I think they started a long time ago, did he cross the white line, or use too much kerb?

“Let us do what we want. If you are unhappy with how we race and how we drive then build different tracks - it’s as easy as that.

“We have car parks with lines and kerbs on it. Anyways, it is what it is and as I said there are too many paragraphs but what do you change? I hope they just burn the papers.”

Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto added: "Without commenting much on the decision, I think that no doubt that as Ferrari we are all very unhappy and disappointed.

"We are disappointed certainly for Ferrari, but we are also disappointed for our fans and for our sport. We do not intend to comment any further."