Oscar Piastri was furious to lose a near-certain 2025 British Grand Prix victory to Formula 1 title rival and McLaren team-mate Lando Norris, thanks to a 10-second penalty for erratic driving behind the safety car.
McLaren debated challenging the F1 stewards' decision, but elected to "take it on the chin", in the words of team principal Andrea Stella.
So did Piastri deserve what he got, what about his argument that McLaren should have ordered Norris to swap positions if the team considered the penalty unfair, and what does this mean for the 2025 title fight now the swing to Norris has the gap down to just eight points at the halfway point of the season?
Piastri was bang to rights
Scott Mitchell-Malm
The timing might have been close, so Piastri could count himself unlucky it went the way he did. But based on the stewards' explanation, it seems he’s bang to rights.
It wasn’t like what happened with Russell in Canada. That one was much more on the usual scale of behaviour behind the safety car. This one was a very different situation ahead of the restart.
Piastri probably wasn’t trying to be clever or catch Verstappen out, he was just reacting to the fact that the safety car was coming in - maybe reacted too sharply to try to manage the restart as he’d ideally like.
It did seem a late call, so you can understand it from his view, but it still fits the definition of driving erratically, especially if you consider it from the position of the car behind.
It’s a shame, as Piastri was mega in the first half of the race and his pace in the wet was stellar.
Norris was quicker later on, but Piastri had track position, so this will surely go down as a lost win for him and a race in which the penalty was decisive rather than a footnote.
A shame for Norris to win like this
Ben Anderson
From what the stewards have said about the decision to penalise Piastri, it seems like a fair cop.
Obviously there will be comparisons made to the Russell/Verstappen incident in Canada, but the difference here was much worse weather conditions, worse visibility for the cars behind the leader, and Piastri using near-enough double the brake pressure in slowing suddenly on the straight than Russell used in Canada.
There has to be a threshold for these things, and on this occasion Piastri fell the wrong side of the line, never mind McLaren's argument that the safety car was late switching its lights out to signal the restart.
It seemed particularly unnecessary to brake so sharply where Piastri did. Why not just slow up more gradually approaching Stowe, slow to a crawl there? There are still three more corners before the restart even after that.
If you're Piastri of course you'll feel extremely frustrated. He was quite clearly the fastest driver in this race. He lost a near-certain win and the chance to extend his championship lead, to basically a needless error.
It's also a shame for Lando Norris, to win his home race in this way when he was quite clearly the second-best McLaren driver.
I admire Piastri's attempt to get McLaren to swap positions
Glenn Freeman
It's an F1 team's job to fight any penalty given to one of its drivers, regardless of whether, deep down, the pitwall agrees with the sanction or not. So who knows if McLaren really felt the penalty was unfair or not.
As Zak Brown revealed live on the Sky F1 broadcast, McLaren tried to get it rescinded. With that in mind, I admire the quick thinking of Piastri in the middle of the race to come up with his suggestion of 'Hang on, if you really think the penalty was unfair, why not swap us back?'
By that point the McLarens were in their own race, so it was an amusing attempt to call his team's bluff. Of course, just because McLaren denied the request doesn't mean the team was convinced the penalty was justified.
I salute the presence of mind from Piastri to come up with the idea in the first place, and I respect the team pushing back against the suggestion.
It would have opened a huge, unnecessary can of 'papaya worms' to try to do that, and the chance of Norris agreeing to it, especially when on course to win his home race, was less than zero.
Was the penalty fair? Probably. Even if McLaren or Piastri tries to argue afterwards that Verstappen exaggerated his reaction (and subsequent brief overlap of Piastri) to dupe the stewards into giving a penalty, that doesn't really explain how the majority of the pack got stacked up behind the leaders as well.
Yes, the safety car lights went out late and while Piastri was accelerating, but Piastri had more space on Hangar Straight to do a more gradual backing up.
He didn't need to jump on the brakes like that.
Verstappen should have been more aware
Gary Anderson
It’s halfway through a long season and the championship is not over yet by any means. Piastri now has an eight-point lead over Norris and a 69-point lead over Verstappen, so he just needs to keep his head down and ‘if’ he has made any mistakes reduce them.
We have seen the FIA’s penalty deceleration, which they issued lately, and for what happened between Piastri and Verstappen behind the safety car fits in with the 10s time penalty he received.
However, when the safety car lights go out - which they did fairly late - the leader becomes the de facto safety car, and if he wants to slow down then it’s up to him and the drivers behind him need to be aware and follow suit.
I’m pretty sure that if Verstappen had really wanted to stay behind Piastri, or at least only go side by side with him he could have achieved that.
When Piastri asked the team if they would reverse the positions I think that was mainly because he knew that the team didn't agree that he deserved a penalty, but the teams don’t make or implement the regulations. If McLaren had tried to reverse positions with Norris, I think that would've pressed the destruct button on any future driver relationship.
The one thing I hate about F1 at the moment is that the teams and drivers - and I mean every one of them - have become just like that little kid at school that felt they had to report everything to the teacher.
Some of this radio chatter is just childish. Sort your problems and complaints out in the GPDA meetings!
And I would just like to add a well-deserved and earned podium to Niko Hulkenberg. It wasn’t by luck and you deserve many more.
Piastri broke the rules
Heidi Munn
It is a clear rule laid out by the FIA that "erratic or dangerous driving under the safety car" is banned - and Piastri breached this.
You could use the excuse of it being a wet race, or that Verstappen may have accelerated too quickly.
But even if you were to remove these factors, it would still have been a risky move from Piastri and one that warranted the penalty.
