Villeneuve: "Hitting Bottas would have given Kimi less of a penalty"

Jacques Villeneuve claims that if Kimi Raikkonen had span out Valtteri Bottas instead of Lewis Hamilton, his penalty would have been halved.

An extraordinary claim from former World Champion Villineuve - believing that Raikkonen would have only had a five second penalty if he span Bottas out instead of Hamilton.

The Ferrari driver crashed into the Mercedes driver in the opening lap of the British Grand Prix that took place on Sunday.

The Finn received a ten second penalty for the incident.

Villeneuve thinks the reason the penalty was so high was due to it being on crowd favourite Hamilton, who was taking part in his home race.

"I don't understand why it's ten seconds, and another time it's five, sometimes it's nothing," Villeneuve told Autosport.

"That's what's wrong. It's racing.

"I don't like it when there are racing penalties, it should be for dirty driving, which is a different thing, or stupid driving."

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff completely disagrees with this statement.

Wolff came out in the aftermath of the race and accused Ferrari of "dirty tactics".

However, Raikkonen has since apologised to Hamilton and the British driver, rather cautiously, accepted the apology.

The fallout goes on, though, and Villeneuve believes that the stewarding at Silverstone was very biased in Hamilton's favour:

"They decided that it's Lewis, we're in the UK, he's fighting for the championship, that's worth ten seconds.

"If it had been Bottas, it would have been five seconds, that's the thing."