As has been said here, and in autosport, we've all been asking for some excitement and racing and then, when drivers start challenging each other hard, people get all stroppy and start asking for penalties, no one ever moaned about weaving durring the 70's or forcing people over the curbs and back then you could race down a generally much narrower pitlane at race speeds whils there were far more journalists etc standing there.
whilst we obviously don't want to go back to some of the wild driving from back then, we shouldn't go over the top when we get two drivers who actually want to challenge each other, same as webber in australia when he hit hamilton, he thought there might have been a chance of grabbing a place whilst the other two got tangled up and got sucked in, if he had held back and the others had been very slow out of the corner he'd have been slaughtered for not getting close enough to take advantage. if you do decide to restart penalising rather than warning then where do you draw the line, could alonso have caused a crash by passing in the pit entrance before the limit line ? if so then what if he did it at a circuit where the pit entrance doesn't give you the space and you run the risk of cars making contact and loosing control and hitting marshalls etc?
at china alonso's move was safe, similarly hamilton and vettel was safe enough, they were released almost at the same time and the "fast lane" in china is wide enough for 2 cars, vettel should have given hamilton room but his reason to hold towards the right was understandable as hamilton wanted to be in a position to take the inside lane into turn 1, hamilton should have given up on his move earlier but hey they, and alonso, were racing and trying on a circuit with room. if they or alonso had tried the same things at monaco then they would have deserved severe penalties, button's move with the safety car could have caused chaos at monaco and i'd expect a penalty if it was done there. as it was he needed to make space before the run to the final bend as the safety car line was before the bend and he could have been vulnerable, as it was, vettel moved on hamilton which resulted in webber being pushed wide but once again they were racing and if people try to pass then you will get contact etc, just watch any of the 70's races and see how often contact resulted in races, anyone else remember the hunt - andretti incident and the " we don't pass on the outside in F1" comment ?
personally i think that this season with an exdriver sitting with the stewards has seen a welcome change in attitude with drivers being given the equivilent of football's yellow card rather than the over zealous showing of the red card equivilent of stop and goes, drive throughs, grid penalties etc. keep the penalties for when a drivers actions results in another driver's race being damaged, when a driver cuts a corner repeatedly, jumps a start or speeds in the pitlane or when becuse of the nature of where an incident takes place there is a risk of injurry to marshalls, mechanics spectators etc.
entry, for example