Jenson Button was impressed with Oscar Piastri’s quick thinking as he called on McLaren to swap positions at Silverstone, if, of course, it also believed his penalty was unfair.
Piastri was leading the British Grand Prix when he was hit with a 10-second time penalty for erratic driving behind the Safety Car.
Oscar Piastri urged McLaren to change positions after ‘unfair’ penalty
In a rain-affected Grand Prix, the Australian driver hit the brakes on Lap 21 just as the Safety Car signalled that it was coming in, and second-placed Max Verstappen went flying past him on his right side.
“Whoa mate! He just suddenly again slows down,” exclaimed Verstappen over the radio.
The stewards ruled that Piastri had been driving erratically behind the Safety Car and “suddenly braked hard,” applying 59.2 psi of brake pressure to go from 218kph to 52kph. As a result, Verstappen had to take “evasive action to avoid a collision.”
The stewards penalised Piastri, dropping him to second behind Lando Norris after he served his penalty.
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The Australian then called on McLaren to swap the drivers’ positions as he felt the penalty was unjust.
“I don’t think the penalty before was very fair,” he told McLaren over the radio. “I know it’s a big question, but if you don’t think it was fair either, I think we should swap back and race.”
McLaren did not, and Piastri later admitted to the media, including PlanetF1.com, that he didn’t expect a different outcome.
“I thought I would ask the question,” he said. “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.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it [not swapping]. Lando didn’t do anything wrong. So I don’t think it would have been particularly fair to have swapped.”
Button, though, reckons it was a clever ploy from the championship leader as McLaren CEO Zak Brown was the first to defend his driver and say the penalty was harsh.
“It was very clever,” Button told Sky F1. “Zak Brown was going to fight his corner and say it wasn’t deserved.
“So he came on the radio, knowing Zak would hear, to say ‘if it wasn’t deserved then why don’t we swap the positions back?’
“It’s amazing he is able to think like that while driving at 200mph through Becketts.”
The 2009 World Champion’s fellow pundit Naomi Schiff reckons this could be the start of the mind games as the McLaren team-mates fight for the F1 2025 World Champion.
Halfway through the season, Piastri leads by eight points ahead of Norris in a fight that shows all the signs of going down to the wire.
“They have proven to be competitive at every circuit and have so much consistency that it doesn’t look like anyone is able, yet, to take the fight to them,” Schiff said.
“So mind games will 100 per cent come into it.
“Comparison is the killer of joy! Your team-mate next to you is constantly being compared. That’s what will be hard.”
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella explained why the team did not swap the position of the drivers, saying it was only fair to let Norris retain the lead.
“In reality, the way we managed the situation, given the penalty, was to allow Oscar, despite the penalty, in case of a Safety Car, to retain the lead,” he said, “because, if there was a Safety Car, both cars would have pitted, Oscar would have paid the penalty, Lando would have waited, and the two McLarens would have gone out in the same order as they came in.
“But at the point in which we needed to have the transition of the dry tyres, then the penalty was paid, and at that stage, we thought that we should just retain the natural order through the penalty.
“I think this was fair for both, and I’m sure that Oscar will understand and agree in this way.”
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