New Oscar Piastri evidence emerges after controversial British GP penalty

Despite McLaren’s claim Oscar Piastri’s British Grand Prix penalty was “harsh”, Anthony Davidson says it was “obvious” his braking on previous laps was “nowhere as bad” as the lap that caught Max Verstappen out.

Although Verstappen led the early running at Silverstone ahead of the McLaren team-mates, he was overtaken by Piastri and Norris to run third.

‘Nowhere near as bad’

That became P2 after the first round of pit stops as the Red Bull driver benefited from a slow pit stop for Norris.

The trio were running Piastri-Verstappen-Norris when the Safety Car was deployed, with the Australian driver comfortably ahead by 13 seconds.

But bunched up behind the field with Verstappen on his rear wing, Piastri made a critical error.

He braked sharply behind the Safety Car.

Just as the Safety Car began to head into the pit lane, Piastri hit the brakes and Verstappen went sailing by him, similar to the Red Bull driver’s incident with George Russell at an earlier race in Canada.

But while in Montreal the stewards put it down to Russell warming his brakes and tyres, this time they ruled it was erratic driving and gave Piastri a 10-second time penalty.

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Piastri, who went on to finish the race in second place behind Norris, had little to say, but his team principal Andrea Stella called it “very harsh”.

Former F1 driver Davidson, examining the moment on the Sky pad, called it just.

“This is the critical moment,” Davidson said.

“It’s all a bit slow here. Safety Car disappears momentarily, Verstappen thinks ‘I get a bit of heat in the rear tyres’ at this point, and then out of nowhere, the McLaren starts to come at you.

“So it really did shock Max in that moment.

“You see how far ahead the Safety Car was at the time. I did tend to agree with the stewards’ decision, I thought it was slightly erratic driving.

“Piastri says ‘I did the same thing every other lap’.

“But here he was on lap 20, just as a reference, lots of weaving going on, there’s a bit of a slowing down, but it’s obviously nowhere near as bad in my opinion as what caught Max out before.

“So I do agree with the stewards with this one.”

Piastri defended his actions, adamant he was just braked behind the Safety Car as he had the previous laps.

“I hit the brakes. At the same time I did that, the lights on the Safety Car went out, which was also extremely late,” he explained.

“I didn’t accelerate because I can control the pace from there, and you saw the result. I didn’t do anything differently from my first restart. I didn’t go any slower, so a shame.”

The Australian driver, who dropped behind Lando Norris as a result of his penalty, reckons his antics were no different to Russell against Verstappen in Canada.

“I don’t know how different it was,” he said about the two Safety Car events.

“I can only comment on what I felt I did, which I felt was well within the rules, and I did it once already in the race so I don’t really get it. I’ll go and have a look back.”

“Going back to Canada,” he added, “I think you had to evade more there than you did [at Silverstone]. So, yeah, I’m a bit confused, to say the least.”

Piastri’s lead in the Drivers’ standing has been slashed to eight points to Norris but his lead over third-placed Verstappen is up to 69 points.

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