MONTMELO, Spain -- Haas team principal Guenther Steiner has been summoned to the stewards at the Spanish Grand Prix over comments he during a media session on Thursday.
Steiner was critical of a decision made by the Monaco Grand Prix stewards to penalise Nico Hulkenberg for causing a collision on the opening lap of last weekend's race and called on the FIA to appoint a permanent panel of stewards.
Steiner argued that Hulkenberg had not actually caused a collision as he believes no contact was made with another car when he pulled an overtaking move on Logan Sargeant at Mirabeau and went on to criticise the consistency of the FIA's stewarding.
"Every professional sport has got professionals being referees and stuff like this," Steiner said. "It's like, F1 is one of the biggest sports in the world and we still have laymen deciding on the fate of people that invest millions in their careers.
"It's always a discussion because there's no consistency. I don't want to blame any particular person on this, but if they're not all there all the time then this is just like a job every... It's not even a job because in a job you can get sacked, because you get paid, and if you do a bad job you get sacked. You cannot get sacked because you do not get paid. I think we need to step it up."
In response to the comments, the stewards at the Spanish Grand Prix summoned Steiner and Haas' team manager Peter Crolla to a hearing over alleged breaches of the FIA's sporting code, including "any act prejudicial to the interests of any competition or to the interests of motor sport generally."
One of the stewards in Spain, Felix Holter, was also on the panel in Monaco and will therefore be replaced by Matthew Selley for the hearing with Steiner.
The FIA appoints a panel of four stewards to rule on racing incidents at each race, some nominated by the governing FIA and one by the home national sporting authority. A former F1 driver is usually among them.
Formula One has used 16 different stewards in six races so far this year, with Singapore's Nish Shetty serving at four of them.
Of the four stewards in Monaco, only 1985 Indianapolis 500 winner Danny Sullivan of the United States had served at a previous race this season.