Oscar Piastri admitted he never seriously expected McLaren to accept his request to swap their cars around after he fell behind his team mate due to a penalty.

Lando Norris won the British Grand Prix after moving ahead of Piastri when the pair made their final pit stops. Piastri had to serve a 10-second time penalty for an earlier incident.

After Norris took the lead, Piastri asked his race engineer Tom Stallard if the team would consider swapping their cars around to put him back in the lead.

“I don’t think the penalty before was very fair,” said Piastri. “I know it’s a big question but if you don’t think it was fair either I think we should swap back and race.”

Stallard told him the team would not consider putting him back in front of Norris. “Oscar, we’re not going to do any team orders,” he said, “it’s just five laps to the end.”

After the race Piastri said he wasn’t surprised by the response. “I thought I would ask the question,” he said. “I knew what the answer was going to be before I asked.

“I just wanted a small glimmer of hope that maybe I could get it back. But no, I knew it wasn’t going to happen.”

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Although McLaren did not accept Piastri’s request, team principal Andrea Stella had no problem with him voicing the suggestion.

“As part of the way we go racing together, as a team with Lando and Oscar, we always tell our drivers don’t keep things in the back of your mind while you drive,” he said. “If you have a point, if you have a suggestion, if you want to let us know what you’re thinking, just say it and then we will evaluate at the pit wall, we will make a decision, we’ll come back to you.

“So I think what Oscar did is exactly what we incentivised our drivers to do. He communicated, he expressed his opinion, which we evaluated.”

However he pointed out that Piastri’s penalty could have turned into a significant disadvantage for Norris had the circumstances of the race played out differently.

“The way we managed the situation today, given the penalty, was to allow Oscar, despite the penalty, in case of a Safety Car, to retain the lead. Because if there was a Safety Car, both cars would have pitted, Oscar would have paid the penalty, Lando would have waited [behind him] and the two McLarens would have gone out in the same order as they came in.

“But at the point in which we needed to have the transition onto the dry tyres, then the penalty was a fate. And at that stage we thought that we should just retain the natural order gained through the penalty. So I think this was fair for both and I’m sure that Oscar will understand and agree with this point of view.”

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