WHATEVER the outcome of this world championship, arguments are going to rage for some time about the many penalties meted out this year.

If I were still a Formula One driver, I would feel unsure of where I stood with regard to wheel-to-wheel racing. Take Sebastien Bourdais’s 25-second penalty from last weekend’s race in Japan: in my view it was incorrect.

The Frenchman’s comment of “What was I supposed to do, roll out the red carpet?” perfectly encapsulated the bewilderment we’re all feeling about some of the stewards’ decisions. The team managers had been briefed that any car coming out of the pit lane side by side with another down to the first apex — Bourdais in this case — would have priority. Felipe Massa was on a roll, making a brilliant recovery, and arrived at that corner on a mission. I’m sure his split-second appraisal of the situation was: “I’m fighting for the title and I need to pass that car right now.”

Perfectly reasonable, and he tried to go round the outside, but it didn’t work. A racing incident for position. The idea that Bourdais was in any way to blame is ludicrous, and that penalty sets a difficult precedent.

As does Lewis Hamilton’s penalty for his first-corner incident. He outbraked himself and ran wide, albeit without contact, after which general chaos ensued. In racing terms he did everything a world title- contending driver shouldn’t have done, but that’s hardly the point. The essence of racing is fighting for position, the best drivers aggressively laying claim to their piece of track. Most fans make sure they watch the start because of the inevitable furious action.

Actually it was Heikki Kovalainen, one of many others to brake too late at the end of an unusually long run into the first corner with cool tyres and cold carbon brakes, who went sailing through and took Kimi Raikkonen wide. Why wasn’t he penalised? Maybe we should start the races behind the safety car with a yellow flag at turn one to prevent overtaking? Even leave it there all race, to prevent any other bold moves. The precedent is that if any driver brakes too late for the first corner, or at any other point in the race, and runs others wide, he must receive a drive-through penalty. The teams are spending tens of millions on radical cars specifically designed to improve overtaking; let’s hope the drivers are allowed to have a go.

Hamilton has made his late season difficult again. He lost his head in Monza qualifying and in Singapore, but got away with it, and the team will have told him in Fuji not to worry about Raikkonen, just stay ahead of Massa. Within a few seconds he had flat-spotted his tyres down to the canvas trying to re-pass Raikkonen; two corners later, he had left the track again.

You don’t normally win a world title making such errors. Hamilton had said he was going to be conservative. That didn’t happen. His racer’s instinct is a pleasure to witness, but it needs to be tempered and carefully applied at critical moments.

He insists that he is not going to change, that he’s in a “good place right now”. His brilliant pole position lap for today’s race and subsequent measured reaction demonstrated that he can get it right.

Hamilton is taking heat from his fellow drivers partly because some of his moves have been overly robust. Fernando Alonso has even said he wants Robert Kubica or Massa to win the title and that he hopes he can help them. After the bullying driver press conference of Thursday, a bigger part of me wanted Hamilton to win the title, but Massa has the class to stay out of the banter.

All the champions I raced against — Lauda, Piquet, Prost, Rosberg, Senna, Hill, Villeneuve, Hakkinen and Schumacher — had that bristly confidence and a selfishness that served them well. But their words and actions were generally delivered more carefully and elegantly than Hamilton’s.

The Briton has that rare ability to conjure whole chunks of lap time from nothing. I saw the same quality when I was teammate to Hakkinen and Schumacher. Just when you thought you had them covered, they would find half a second, leaving you thinking, “Where the hell did that come from?” Kovalainen knows what I mean. Few drivers can do that.

Hamilton is at a crucial stage of his career. How he develops will determine whether he’s remembered as a true great or just a phenomenally talented but flawed driver. I admire his confidence, and if he were to take the championship today, 50 years to the day since Mike Hawthorn became the first British world champion, it would finally reward his brilliance behind the wheel. I hope he doesn’t blow it again with moments of over-confident madness, or by receiving harsh penalties.