Bernie Ecclestone has warned that issuing penalties in Formula 1 races on a regular basis risks leading to dri꧂vers 'losing the confidence to try to fight' and spoiling the sport.

The F1 ringmaster's comments come in the wake of not only a highly contentious Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji last weekend - in which McLaren-Mercedes world championship leader Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari ace Felipe Massa and Scuderia Toro Rosso star S?bastien Bourdais were all penalised, in the latter's case extremely controversially - but also the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps last month, when Hamilton lost his hard-𝓡fought victory in the stewards ☂room after the chequered flag had fallen.

That has led to a number of figures in the paddock suggesting that if drivers are penalised for trying to overtake, they will cease to attempt to do so - and ꦡit will be the sport that emerges as the biggest los🐼er. Ecclestone seems to agree.

"We must be careful that we don't punish every little thing," the 77-year-old told German publication Auto Motor und Sport, "otherwise the drivers will lose the confidenc꧒e to try to fight.

"What I w🔜ant is a referee, who either immediately announces a penalty or, as in football, shows a yellow card. For certain offences you get a red card, for others a yellow.

"Once you have a certain 🅘number of yellow cards, you are banned for the next race."

That would be one way for F1's rule-makers to spice up the show - something seen as being of vital importance in the next couple of years - and on a similar🐬 theme Ecclestone suggested a number of other measures to make the action more exciting and bring escalating expenditure back into check.

"For qualifying it sh﷽ould all be on low fuel, and there should b🥂e points," he argued. "We could also reduce the number of paddock passes for the guys who work on the cars.

"[In terms of testing] I would be even more r💧adical, [with] only one track at which you can test and we stay at each grand prix track one day longer so they can test on Mo🍎nday."