New Piastri penalty evidence revealed after Verstappen brake pressure analysed
Jolyon Palmer has spoken in defence of Oscar Piastri after his Silverstone penalty.
Oscar Piastri has found new support from Jolyon Palmer following the British GP penalty that dropped him to second place.
Piastri was leading in Silverstone when he was penalised for ‘erratic braking’ under a mid-race Safety Car, landing him with a costly 10-second penalty.
Jolyon Palmer insists Oscar Piastri Safety Car braking was ‘not shocking’
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
Palmer has moved to defend the championship leader, suggesting that his actions were not erratic at all, but entirely consistent with his actions earlier in the race.
On Lap 21, the lights on the Safety Car were extinguished as it traversed Hangar Straight. As it did so, race leader Piastri braked to keep temperature in his brakes and tyres.
The coincidental timing of the two events meant that, by the letter of the regulations, the McLaren driver had broken the rules and was duly handed a 10-second penalty.
Served at his final pit stop, the delay was enough to drop him behind team-mate Lando Norris, who went on to win his home Grand Prix and narrow the championship points gap to eight.
Post-race, a clearly frustrated Piastri chose his words carefully, though he argued that his actions were in keeping with what he’d done earlier in the race.
That’s a view shared by Palmer, who has cited telemetry to support his belief.
“He didn’t brake as hard as he could. That’s clear,” the ex-Renault F1 driver said on the F1 Nation podcast.
“I’ve looked at the data, and just four corners earlier, coming out of Copse, before Maggotts, there’s a nice long stretch. Oscar does the same thing.
“He was routinely breaking at 60 psi, brake pressure. That was not an extraordinary amount. You know, he’s doing it every lap. Every lap at the same point on the Hangar Straight, he’s hitting that brake pressure. It’s not shocking.”
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Palmer’s comments are supported by analysis conducted by PlanetF1.com’s Uros Radovanovic that highlighted the fact Piastri’s actions were entirely consistent even with an earlier Safety Car.
The difference, however, was the reaction of second-placed Max Verstappen. It was only on Lap 21 that the Dutchman reacted over the radio and sailed by the race leader. It was a move that McLaren team boss Andrea Stella suggested exaggerated the incident and the resultant penalty “very harsh.”
“The 50 bar [60 psi], it’s a pressure that you see during the Safety Car when you do some braking and acceleration,” Stella told the media, including PlanetF1.com, following the British GP.
“We’ll have to see also if other competitors kind of made the situation look worse than what it is, because we know that the race craft for some competitors, definitely, there’s also the ability to make others look like they are causing severe infringement when they are not.”
Palmer added: “In the Stewards’ document, everyone’s clinging on to ‘wow, 60 psi is so much’. Formula 1 cars can brake more than double that.
“I know George [Russell] braked at 30 psi [in Canada], but it’s irrelevant. It doesn’t matter. That’s an incident that wasn’t punished, and is very different.
“It’s all about the relativity of it, and Oscar was doing it routinely. Max, before, was able to break at 60 psi and stop. And at that point, when he went past Oscar, he braked at about 40 psi and went past him.”
Feeling aggrieved by the situation in the car, Piastri suggested McLaren reverse the running order late in the race if they also agreed it was unfair.
That fell on deaf ears, the squad sticking to its mantra of allowing its drivers to race to the flag.
The result was another one-two for McLaren, its fifth of the season and second in a row as it moves out to a 238-point advantage over Ferrari in the Constructors’ Championship.
It was also Norris’ second win on the bounce, reducing Piastri’s title advantage to eight points at the season’s halfway mark.
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