Piastri disputes penalty call: ‘Verstappen managed to avoid me the first time’

Oscar Piastri has been given two penalty points on his licence for his incident with Max Verstappen during a Safety Car period at the British Grand Prix.

The McLaren driver was also given a 10-second time penalty during the race for the infringement shortly before a restart during the race.

The stewards penalised Piastri for slowing sharply in front of Max Verstappen before the race restarted. However Piastri pointed out George Russell went unpunished for a similar incident in Canada last month, and claimed Verstappen had to take more serious evasive action on that occasion.

“I don’t think he had to evade me,” said Piastri. “I think he managed the first time.

“I would say going back to Canada, he had to evade more there than he did today. So I’m a bit confused, to say the least.”

The incident occured after the Safety Car was deployed while Piastri was leading. After the Safety Car began returning to the pits to commence the restart, Piastri slowed on the Hangar straight. Verstappen, running second, came past him, then slowed to let the McLaren by again.

The stewards swiftly announced Piastri was under investigation and issued his penalty soon afterwards. They said Piastri’s driving as well as Verstappen’s reaction to it was the basis for their decision.

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“When the clerk of the course had declared that the Safety Car was coming in that lap and the lights were extinguished, car 81 [Piastri] suddenly braked hard (59.2 psi of brake pressure) and reduced speed in the middle of the straight between [turn] 14 and [turn] 15, from 218 kph to 52 kph, resulting in car one [Verstappen] having to take evasive action to avoid a collision,” they ruled.

“This momentarily resulted in car one unavoidably overtaking car 81, a position which he gave back immediately. Article 55.15 of the FIA Sporting Regulations required car 81 to proceed at a pace which involved no erratic braking nor any other manoeuvre which is likely to endanger other drivers from the point at which the lights on the safety car are turned off.

“What car 81 did was clearly a breach of that article. In accordance with the penalty guidelines, we imposed a 10 second time penalty to car 81.”

Piastri’s penalty means he is now on a total of six penalty points.

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