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Having read the post race report, it seems like madness. The crux of the matter seems to be applying the 5 second penalty while the race is going on, something which I don't remember seeing in the past. Pretty much every series which runs a retrospective time penalty applies it at the end of the race, which would have made this situation trivial. You're leading on track = you're the leader, but not necessarily the winner once penalties have been applied.
The matter of contact between the Ferrari and Bentley seems to have been created/inflated post-hoc to provide justification here - nobody seemed to be complaining about it during the race - the Bentley crew never mentioned it in interviews that I saw. From the perspective of the Ferrari crew, they've been penalised for obeying the clerks orders - a ridiculous state of affairs, and something which, if it happened to me while racing, would cause some seriously heated discussion.
They need to fix this scenario so it can't happen again, while also making sure that they have sufficient discretion (which I think they probably do anyway, but fluffed it) to deal with future situations where the letter of the law would lead to an absurdity.
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