Former F1 team principal Otmar Szafnauer believes the FIA should have employed a radical solution after 'human error' sparked Sprint Qualifying chaos at the Singapore Grand Prix.

The drama began when Friday's Sprint Qualifying 1 session was red-flagged after debris from Sergio Perez's Cadillac was left on track.

Once the SQ1 session was resumed, overtake mode was not switched back on, costing drivers up to 0.6 seconds in trying to improve their times to try and avoid finishing in the bottom six and missing out on a place in SQ2.

Worse was to come though when the overtake mode was then switched on for 27 seconds, meaning only certain cars on the track would get the benefit, before it was switched back off again.

The FIA admitted human error was the cause, single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis admitting: “Normally it is a manual process to re-enable it, because clearly when it gets re-enabled we want to make sure from a safety point of view it's okay to do so.

“Unfortunately, there was a pop-up window that came on somebody's computer that was not acted on quickly enough or when it should have. And then under the time pressure and the general other pressure, this was forgotten, unfortunately.

“We then went into quite an intense analysis about, was there some other issue, because we could hear, of course, the drivers complaining and saying what's happening. We realised where the problem was.

“At that time there was an erroneous decision to briefly turn it on again, but that was sort of not exactly the correct decision in order for fairness. And then it was turned off again.”

The issue left some disadvantaged teams furious, notably Williams and Aston Martin (who reportedly considered launching a protest).

'Just do it over' - Szafnauer

Szafnauer was asked to give his analysis of what had happened at Marina Bay, and he proposed a radical solution which would have prevented any driver from being eliminated in SQ1 because of the error.

Speaking on the High Performance Racing podcast, he said: "The FIA raised their hand and said human error. We all make them. To me, what you then do - and I think Williams were the ones who pointed it out because they were disadvantaged - let everyone go through into Q2. Just do it over.

"And then instead of having six of them knocked out in Q2, have 12 of them knocked out in Q2. That's what I would have done and the nobody can complain 'ooh I was disadvantaged.'"

Szafnauer also gave another reason why this would have been a good move, with a cheeky dig at Aston Martin star Lance Stroll. The Canadian holds the unwanted record of most Q1 exits in his career, now into three figures.

"And that would have meant that Lance Stroll's record of being knocked out in Q1 more than anyone else would have been a little bit easier to overtake," he said.

The FIA blunder came just five days after a software issue on the formation lap had caused the start of the Bahrain Grand Prix to be delayed at Sepang, Malaysia.