FIA documents show the British Grand Prix stewards could have been more lenient to Oscar Piastri at Silverstone, instead of the 10-second penalty that put Lando Norris in the driving seat.
Oscar Piastri insists he “deserved” to win the British Grand Prix over home hero Lando Norris. And McLaren boss Zak Brown pointed the finger at Max Verstappen, accusing the Red Bull racer of making Piastri’s dramatic braking behind the safety car “look worse than it was”.
The Aussie was leading a rain-soaked Silverstone race when he braked hard after the safety car sped off, leaving Piastri in control of the restart. But he slammed on so hard that he dropped from 135mph to just 32mph, applying almost 60psi of brake pressure.
That caused Verstappen to briefly overtake and created a concertina effect through the pack as others braked hard too. In a statement, the stewards said Piastri’s actions had forced Verstappen to “take evasive action to avoid a collision”.
But the McLaren driver insisted: “I don’t think he had to evade me.” And team chief executive Brown said: “I think Max accelerated, Oscar braked, which made it look worse than it was. The telemetry didn’t look like it looked on TV.”
Team principal Andrea Stella also thought the penalty for Piastri was “very harsh” and said: “There are a few factors that we would have liked the stewards to take into account. The safety car was called in very late, not leaving much time for the leader to actually restart in conditions in which you lose tyre temperature, you lose brake temperature, and the same goes for everyone.
“We’ll have to see also if other competitors kind of made the situation look worse than what it is, because we know that the race craft for some competitors, definitely, there’s also the ability to make others look like they are causing severe infringement when they are not.”
McLaren were never going to appeal the penalty, because it would have caused more, much bigger problems. If they had managed to win such a protest, then Norris would have been stripped of his victory and the Brit would have had a lot to say about that.
The FIA’s penalty guidelines for stewards, made available to the public for the first time only last month, make it clear that the incident could have been approached differently. That stewards’ document made it clear he had been punished for “erratic braking when the safety car lights were extinguished”, for which he was given a 10-second time penalty and had two penalty points added to his licence.
According to the penalty guidelines, “driving unnecessarily slowly, erratically or in a manner which could be deemed potentially dangerous to other drivers or any person while the safety car is deployed” can be punished with a five or 10 second, drive-through or 10 second stop-and-go penalty.
The stewards also give any driver found to have committed such an offence either two or three penalty points. So Piastri got the lightest possible punishment on that front, and the second lightest of the four sporting penalty available.
Many, including Verstappen, thought Piastri’s 10-second penalty was a bit much — a five-second penalty might have been more reasonable and could’ve kept his shot at victory alive, especially after such a strong drive. He’s understandably frustrated, but now he’s got a couple of weekends to cool off and regroup. He plans to take in some tennis at Wimbledon on Wednesday, and then it’s full focus on the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, where he’ll no doubt be fired up and ready to bounce back.
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