McLaren's double disqualification from the Las Vegas Grand Prix has reopened a debate in Formula 1 about teams facing harsh consequences for minor rules breaches.
From the perspective of McLaren, it feels that getting a car thrown out for having a skid plate that was worn, in Lando Norris's case, by just 0.12mm too much on one side and 0.07mm on the other, was disproportionate.
After all, we are talking about a difference that is less than the thickness of a human hair.
However, F1 has operated for years now under the premise that a breach of the technical regulations results in the standard penalty of exclusion.
It doesn't matter if your skid block is worn 0.01mm or 0.1mm too much. If you are over the limit, you are out.
Ahead of the Qatar GP weekend, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella suggested that change could be made in the future, however.
He hinted that there was an idea that if there are minor issues that come up in post-race inspections, especially in areas where there is no performance benefit, then exclusion may not be the only outcome.
He said: "The FIA itself has admitted that this lack of proportionality should be addressed in the future to ensure that minor and accidental technical infringements, with minimal or no performance benefits, do not lead to disproportionate consequences."
It's a nice idea in theory, and would certainly be welcomed by teams that can find themselves pushed over some limits through no direct fault of their own.
On too much plank wear, for example, a change of wind direction can be enough to affect how closely a car runs to the ground at the end of straights - and that is enough to trigger excessive plank wear.
But F1 is not a category that is run by niceties, and any move to allow some degree of freedom for breaching technical limits would not be viewed simply as a way to deal with the odd occasion where teams slip up.
Instead, in a world where small margins make big differences, it would be treated as a green light by all teams to start operating outside of the limits of the rules.
If teams know they can get away with a car being 0.1kg underweight, or a plank being worn by 0.5mm too much, then that suddenly becomes the new limit for everyone.
This is the exact reason why the FIA does not allow leeway on specific regulations where there are breaches, even if the punishment appears to be harsh.
Lewis Hamilton faced a fine at the Las Vegas GP for being 0.1km/h over the 80km/h limit in practice.
At the start of the race, Kimi Antonelli picked up a penalty for rolling forward ever so slightly before the lights went out.
In both cases, the offences seemed so minor that it hardly seemed worth picking them up. But to let these things go would have meant that these become new accepted limits of what teams can get away with.
So if drivers knew they could get away with going slightly quicker in the pitlane, all of them would have to do it. And, at the start, the new norm would be in rolling forward slightly before the lights.
The risks of opening up a can of worms of allowing minor indiscretions and leniency in punishments is something that has long been resisted by a lot of teams, and is not deemed worth it by the FIA either.
The Race understands that the topic has come up in previous F1 Commission meetings, but has always been voted down because of the unintended consequences it could bring about.
And while sources suggest that the FIA is open to discussing the matter with teams again if they feel it is something that can work, it is very much something that would require majority support from the grid to make it happen.
With the downsides of it pretty clear, this means it is not likely to move forwards.
Teams need to all operate off the same rulebook and interpret things in the same way. That is why the technical regulations have to be black and white.
There cannot be a car weight limit that most teams understand but someone else is able to run under because they made a mistake or something unexpected happens.
The same goes for the dimension of parts, plank wear, or endless other restrictions laid down in the rules.
And having things end up in a scenario where FIA stewards would have to judge how much of a performance advantage was gained from a minor rules breach would open up endless complications.
Teams would game the system: claim ignorance in something being outside the rules; argue that it did not bring a performance advantage; and then seek to get away with it.
The best deterrent for all teams operating in grey areas with the technical regulations has always been that if you are outside the rules, then you are out. No ifs, no buts.
The late FIA race director Charlie Whiting had a famous way of keeping teams in check when it came to pushing boundaries. He always joked with them that Article 0.0.0 of every rule book was: "Thou shalt not take the p**s."
Moving technical regulation infringements into an arena where teams can argue that what they did was minor and did not bring any benefit certainly poses the risk of them breaching Article 0.0.0 over and over and over again.
