Oscar Piastri revised his opinion of his sprint race penalty after seeing how the stewards responded to Sunday’s controversial incident between his team mate and Max Verstappen.
Lando Norris was given a five-second time penalty for overtaking Verstappen after the Red Bull went off at turn 12 and forced the McLaren driver wide on his outside.
Piastri also received a five-second time penalty after he passed Pierre Gasly on the inside of the same corner in the sprint race and forced his rival off the track. Before the grand prix Piastri said he “probably deserved” the penalty, but afterwards he struggled to reconcile it with how the stewards reacted to his team mate’s incident.
Asked whether drivers have enough clarity over how penalties are awarded, Piastri said: “Given those incidents were so similar with opposite penalties, probably not.
“It’s very, very difficult, especially when you’ve got a car on the outside and both cars going off the track and stuff like that. So it’s not an easy thing to decide. The difference of 20 or 30 centimetres being alongside can make a massive difference.”
Piastri confirmed his team advised him to back off in case Norris was penalised. “They told me to slow down a bit on the last lap, which is fair to me,” he said.
“I’ve seen the incident a bit and it’s pretty harsh, I would say, considering I had a very similar incident yesterday in Max’s position and I was the one that got a penalty. So I’m sure we’ll have some questions about that.”
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The McLaren driver wasn’t the only one to query his penalty. The Ferrari pair thought it was excessive.
“I think some things are [clear], others are still a bit blurry to me,” said Carlos Sainz Jnr in the post-race press conference.
“There was an example yesterday with Oscar’s overtake. That for me was completely fine and very similar to anything that we’ve done between each other on the sprint. And I felt like the penalty on Oscar yesterday was really, really harsh and didn’t go along with some guidelines that I thought were the way they were. So that penalty surprised me yesterday.”
Charles Leclerc agreed Piastri’s penalty was “a bit too harsh.”
“However, on the rules, I think they are clear,” he continued. “Sometimes the interpretation of the rule can be a little bit different because it…
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