Verstappen, who leads the series but has not won in 10 races since the Spanish Grand Prix in May, was penalized for overly aggressive driving during two bruising incidents with Norris in the early stages of the race.

On both occasions he pushed the Briton off the track, as he had on similar occasions at the United States Grand Prix in Austin a week earlier.

Ferrari pilot Carlos Sainz, who will leave the team next year and be replaced by seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, won Sunday’s race ahead of Norris, while his teammate Charles Leclerc finished third in the second Ferrari.

“Probably not enough. I mean, it’s getting a bit ridiculous. I applaud the FIA ​​stewards. That’s enough. Let’s have a nice, clean race going forward,” Brown said.

“I think the referees are involved in this, it can be seen from the penalties given. The referees did a good job this weekend.”

Norris said: “I knew what to expect, I didn’t want to expect something like that because I respect Max as a driver, but I was prepared to expect something like that and I think it’s not a very clean ride. I avoided it.” And it was a good race.”

Verstappen started from second alongside pole-sitter Sainz and initially overtook him to lead the opening laps, then overtook him shortly before the Spaniard began his battle with Norris.

The result meant Verstappen’s lead in the championship race was reduced by 10 points to 47, while Ferrari overtook Red Bull in the constructors’ championship, leaving them 29 points behind leader McLaren, four race weekends behind.

Verstappen shrugged off the penalties as “pretty big” but said he was more concerned about Red Bull losing competitive tempo which had led to its involvement in controversial incidents.

“The problem is that when you’re slower you get into those kinds of positions and I’m not going to give up easily,” he said.

“At the end of the day, it’s not about agreeing or disagreeing on the penalties. The only issue is that 20 seconds is quite a lot, but the biggest issue today and what I’m worried about is the race pace, which is really not good and it’s something we need to analyse.

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“Even without these penalties, we had no chance of competing at the front.”

He added that he was not too worried about losing his lead in the championship.

“I’m not worried,” he said. “This was a really bad day for us, but I know we can do better than this, so we keep going.”

On a bad day for Red Bull, Sergio Perez also received a five-second penalty for a false start, while team principal Christian Horner was on the defensive.

“Max didn’t leave the track in Turn Four and Lando opened the door late in Turn Seven and they both ran away.” he said.

“But the problem is this is dangerous territory; when will ‘diving for bombs’ work?

“The drivers and the FIA ​​need to sit together and reach an agreement. The two time penalties for Max were a bit difficult today. We have to play by the rules and we will learn from today.”