I agree with the overall point, yet we have to be careful not to conflate the rules with the stewarding/refereeing. You mentioned the expression grey area and I would like to point out that the football rules have been revised in the last 10 years or so, to finally shrink the scope of interpretation. There is still a lot of 'freedom' for the referees and their interpretation, but I agree, that more clear boundaries have been established. I would point to some glaring examples to the contrary, but prefer to come back to F1, which has the exact opposite situation.
The rules for football (laws of the game) are widely accessible and available including how transgressions are to be punished. In F1 on the other hand the whole thing is absolutely opaque. We can't really say, how much room for interpretation there is, because the FIA won't publish their Driving Standard Guidelines (may I present a version back from the Imola GP 2022!). So we have no real reference to measure the Stewarding against. What this year's exact wording is concerning the mirror of the overtaking car being alongside the axle of the other or whatever it is, we simply don't know. The only thing we have is the International Sporting Code (ISC), and from that Appendix L is usually the one cited in the decisions, because it handles overtaking. But: There's only a mention of a penalty points system in there, not how it is handled, nor what exactly gives someone a "right to the line" or anything in that direction.
For unsafe releases, we have ISC App. L Chapter IV 5. d) which states that "Cars must not be released from a garage or pit stop position in a way that could endanger or unnecessarily impede pit lane personnel or another driver". The penalties for breaching this rule (or anything else in the ISC) is handled somewhere else (The same goes for the Formula 1 Sporting Regulations, where the unsafe release is defined again with a few specialties to F1). In Appendix B (Stewards Penalty Guidelines) they very vaguely describe, that Stewards have the authority to enforce these rules and that they "retain the discretion (...) to tailor the penalty to the specific situation." (i.e. to judge mitigating/aggravating circumstances, etc.). Again, no clear reference to measure against. As an example for the seeming arbitrariness: In the decision document around Max' 10 second time penalty and 3 penalty points, they mention the infringement of App. L Chapter IV Article 2 d) of the ISC, but as we've seen, there isn't anything concrete in there relating to the severity of the penalty.
If we go back to Miami, Max got a 10s penalty in the Sprint for an unsafe release with a collision as a result. In their decision document the stewards write: "The Stewards acknowledge that the driver did everything he could to avoid the incident and therefore no penalty points are issued in this case." So it seems that the Stewards could theoretically issue penalty points depending on the incident at question. But again, we have no possibility to actually know. In Oliver Bearman's case in the same race, the time penalty was only 5s and there wasn't anything mentioned about any penalty points.
So regardless whether we think the rules should be penalty points for unsafe releases or not, we can't even tell how good of a job the stewards are doing, because there's a lot of uncertainty within the rules, and we don't even have access to all the relevant publications of the rules and their clarification.
It's funny to read back the thread. It makes it seem as if we disagree, when we clearly agree.
Yeah. But we don't know how, because they only changed the unpublished guidelines... probably. We can't really know. And you are probably correct that they want to maintain their leeway for nuance or/and manipulation, as can be witnessed nearly every season.
The kicker of this one driver's behavior last season: it's a clear breach of Appendix L Ch.4 2. b), c) and d). But all that has to happen because of that is a reporting to the Stewards. Everything beyond that is - by the rules we have access to - fully up to them. That's all I'm trying to say. The actual rules don't just offer grey areas, they lack any enforcement. It's like if the lotg say, that if the ref sees a foul, he can do as he pleases. And these problems and discussions won't cease until there are clear limits within the rules and guidelines and the public can finally see them. It doesn't mean they shouldn't allow for nuance, but this is just ridiculously arbitrary.