Nico Rosberg has bucked the trend and come out in support of the stewards decision to penalise Sebastian Vettel, calling it "fully deserved".
The 2016 World Champion, who is a former Mercedes team-mate of Lewis Hamilton, took to YouTube to explain why he believes it was the correct decision and called out the Ferrari driver for making another mistake under pressure, something which plagued Vettel's 2018 season.
"Please let me explain to you, from the outside it doesn't look that hard, but I promise you – and I've been there many times – when Lewis is stuck on your gearbox for one and a half hours, it is one of the most extreme situations to be in because you can't even make a single mistake.
"You can never allow yourself to go close to the limit, whereas if you're the guy behind you can always go looking for the limit because if you make a mistake, no problem. It's much easier to follow than to be in front.
"I was rooting for Vettel, but we saw this typical thing that when the pressure is on and when it's a battle between Lewis and Vettel, he just makes those mistakes and once again he made the mistake again this time."
Vettel was handed a five-second time penalty for rejoining in an unsafe manner, but was furious during and after the race, insisting he had nowhere else to go because he wasn't in control of his car, but Rosberg doesn't believe that's a good enough excuse.
"So Vettel goes off the track, then comes back on. Now Vettel was screaming 'I had dirt on my tyres, I was out of control, where do you want me to go? I was struggling to control the car, and I couldn't see Lewis.'
"Okay great. But Lewis is there. The rule says when you go off the track, you need to rejoin safely. So Vettel went all the way across and I think he could have easily left a little bit more space, especially in the latter phase like after Lewis started braking. He could easily have left more space, he didn't.
"He went right, right, all the way there and left hardly any space to Lewis. And so Lewis saw it as a dangerous situation because Vettel was coming more and more, so he had to back out of it.
"I looked at the replay many, many times. Lewis would have been in the wall had he stayed there because right afterwards Vettel continued to move over more and more and more and it was so tight that Lewis would have touched either Vettel or the wall.
"So it is very, very clear that unfortunately it was an unsafe return to the track. That is the rule. You have to return safely and that is the way it is. A penalty is deserved in that case."
Rosberg revealed that he even discussed it with his father, 1982 World Champion Keke Rosberg, who believed it was on the limit.
"My father said to me, 'It's probably 60/40 – 60 penalty, 40 not.' I asked, 'why 40 not?' 'Well, because he was just out of control and he could not do better than that because he had dirt on his tyres and was coming from the grass and everything'.
"I said, 'Okay, fine I know that. But so what? You still have to return safely and if you are out of control then you are not returning safely.'
"So that is it. Penalty deserved. It is not a valid excuse: 'Oh I was out of control, I had dirty tyres and I couldn't see Lewis.' It is not a valid excuse unfortunately. So the penalty is full deserved. Absolutely fully deserved penalty."
Ferrari have notified the FIA of their intention to appeal the penalty, although it's unclear if such a penalty can even be appealed.
