Red Bull boss Christian Horner says the penalty incurred by Mercedes and Nico Rosberg under the team radio restrictions is unlikely to act as a deterrent against messages from the pit wall.
Rosberg dropped from second to third after a ten-second time penalty was issued by the stewards following the race. They deemed a message telling Rosberg to shift through seventh gear was in breach of rules designed to ensure the driver drives the car alone and unaided.
However, now that engineers know the penalty for communicating with their drivers, Horner believes they will judge future messages based on the gap to the car behind.
"First of all, I think the rule is rubbish," Horner told journalists before the penalty had been issued. "It doesn't make a great deal of sense, but the rules are the rules and on two counts, it sounds like instructions were given that breached that protocol. One was the switch change that was made and then the second was on how to drive the car with the seventh gear issue that they had.
"What will be interesting to see is the precedent that the stewards now come up with because if it is just a 5-second penalty or a reprimand, it is all fair game for the rest of the year and there will be loads of messages, where we will take into account, whether or not it is worth 5 seconds or not, or a reprimand given to the car.
"So, I think what will be interesting to see is the precedent that is set by Charlie and the stewards because they made it very clear, explicitly clear, going into this weekend what their expectations were."
Horner believes Formula One should revisit the rules.
"The cars are technically very complex and you can understand why Mercedes would want to give that message to keep their driver running. Now it is a team sport at the end of the day and the cars are a lot more complicated than they were even four years ago for the drivers to be able to work out what they should and shouldn't be doing. The question going forward is: Are these rules right for Formula One?"