It was a rather disappointing day for champion leader Oscar Piastri today at the F1 British GP. In fact, the Australian driver had had a pretty positive start from P2, and had even passed pole sitter Max Verstappen early on in the race.
What went wrong?
Piastri had built a positive lead, however his race came, unraveling at a safety car restart. In fact, on Lap 21 he was noted for erratic braking as the Safety Car period ended, and consequently penalised with a 10 seconds time penalty, which resulted in his teammate Lando Norris taking the win.
Piastri left the twelfth race of the season extremely displeased with his performance in the F1 British GP, as he said after the end of the race:
“Yeah, I’m not going say much. I’ll get myself in trouble. So well done to Nico. I think that’s the highlight of the day. So yeah, I’ll leave it there.”
The McLaren driver also felt like his penalty was undeserved, explaining that in his opinion he hadn’t braked too much more than compared to previous laps:
“I mean, apparently you can’t brake behind the safety car anymore. I mean, I did it for five laps before that. Again, I’m not going say too much till I get myself in trouble. But thanks to the crowd for a great event. Thanks for sticking through the weather. I still like Silverstone even if I don’t like it today. So, thanks for coming out, everyone.”
Undeserved penalty
He went into further details in the post race press conference, during which he extrerned his disappointment.
“I hit the brakes. At the same time I did that, the lights on the Safety Car went out, which was also extremely late. And then obviously, I didn’t accelerate because I can control the pace from there. And, yeah, you saw the result. I didn’t do anything differently to my first restart. I didn’t go any slower. I didn’t do anything differently. So, a shame.”
Asked if he was considering going to the stewards to motion a protest, Piastri admitted he didn’t reckon it to be an important step to take.
“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s worth doing at the moment. I’m not sure it’s going to be very constructive in all honesty. I don’t know. But I don’t really care at the moment.”
Another hot topic was the request the papaya driver had put in towards the end of the race. Piastri had asked for a car swap, to return into the lead of the race, which the team denied in favour of fairness and Norris’s first ever home race win.
“Yeah. I thought I would ask the question. I knew what the answer was going to be before I asked. But 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,” stated Piastri.
He summed up the positives and the negatives of his race day, ultimately saving his overall performance and the ninth podium of his Formula 1 season.
