Oscar Piastri penalty explained, Lando Norris gets title momentum, points, standings

WAS PIASTRI TREATED HARSHLY?

Piastri seemed certain to dominate the British Grand Prix during its disrupted opening stanza. After blasting past Verstappen, the Australian piled pain onto the field, obliterating all rivals to open what peaked at a 13.5-second lead before the safety cars bunched up the field.

Those safety cars didn’t just nip that in the bud; they set up the circumstances in which Piastri would cost himself what looked like an easy victory.

Preparing to restart the race at the end of lap 21, he hit the brakes hard down the Wellington straight.

Max Verstappen, directly behind him, had to take evasive action to avoid rear-ending the McLaren. The Dutchman briefly overtook Piastri to avoid the crash, and he was immediately on team radio to complain about his rival’s behaviour.

The stewards opened an investigation and decided Piastri was guilty of braking erratically, slapping him with a 10-second penalty.

With Norris up into second place courtesy of Verstappen’s subsequent spin at Vale, Piastri had no chance to build the required buffer.

It was clear as soon as the penalty was handed down that Piastri would finish second short of some other extraordinary circumstance.

For the first time in his Formula 1 career Piastri was frustrated beyond words, the Australian unusually curt in his post-race media commitments to avoid incriminating himself.

“I did what I did at the first restart, and apparently one needed a penalty and one didn’t,” he said.

“I don’t really understand it. I need to look back and see. But I really didn’t think I did anything different or anything wrong.”

The stewards found he shed 166 kph on the brakes — down from 218 kph to 52 kph — requiring almost 410 kPa of braking force.

Piastri’s telemetry showed that in fact did drive similarly at the previous safety car restart on lap 17, when he hit the brakes to decelerated by 158 kph — from 208 kph down to 50 kph.

He appeared to be applying less pressure, however, braking slightly more gently.

But there are important differences.

When Piastri hit the brakes for the first restart, he was just at the exit of Chapel, when the field behind him wouldn’t have been travelling nearly as quickly as him.

Because the safety car lights were extinguished later the second time around, Verstappen and others behind Piastri were travelling similarly fast when he hit the brakes.

It’s also worth considering that conditions were different between safety cars. Piastri did not brake nearly as heavily on any of his previous laps during the second safety car period leading up to his penalty.

He hadn’t been slower than 122 kph on either of the two prior laps and hadn’t shed more than 124 kph.

The data trace also makes clear that Piastri hit the brakes harder on lap 21 than he had on either of those previous laps.

The George Russell defence also doesn’t stack up as a precedent.

Red Bull Racing lodged a protest against Russell for braking erratically late in the Canadian Grand Prix last month in what superficially appeared to be a similar incident.

However, the stewards agreed with Mercedes’s explanation that Russell had behaved in the same way during previous laps behind the safety car.

Perhaps most important, however, was that Russell hit the brakes with only 205 kPa — that is, half the braking force Piastri used to incur his penalty.

Where the Australian could argue he was hard done by is with the scale of the penalty — and thanks to the FIA’s publication of the penalty guidelines in recent weeks, we have the stewards’ workings.

According to the guidelines, the stewards had the power to penalise Piastri between 5 seconds and 10 seconds. The two penalty points added to his licence was the minimum to be awarded.

Had it not been so wet and hot visibility not been so poor in the spray down the straight, Piastri might have got away with it. In the prevalent conditions and in that precise part of the circuit, the Australian was deemed to have acted outside the rules.

“I think anytime you get into these penalties, there’s an element of subjectivity,” McLaren CEO Zak Brown told Sky Sports. “Trying to get temperature in the tyres, it’s wet, late call — close one.”

PIT TALK PODCAST:

NORRIS GETS HIS DOUBLE TO SLASH CHAMPIONSHIP DEFICIT

Norris must’ve have been able to believe his luck when Verstappen spun out of second place ahead of him just seconds before the race resumed form its second safety car.

Imagine, then, what he must’ve felt when he learnt Piastri in the lead would have to serve a 10-second penalty.

Norris had been the second-best McLaren driver this weekend — marginally but decisively. After having missed out on victory through tyre choice last year, Piastri seemed certain to beat him to the top step this season.

But that shouldn’t count against his victory. The story of the race is that Norris executed better on the day and claimed victory.

It’s worth noting that Norris won by 6.8 seconds — enough to have beaten Piastri even had the Australian copped the more lenient 5-second penalty.

“It’s beautiful, everything I dreamed of, everything I’ve ever wanted to achieve,” he said. “Apart from a championship, I think this is as good as it gets in terms of feeling, in terms of achievement.

“The last few laps I was just looking into the crowd. I was just trying to take it all in and enjoy the moment because it might never happen again — hopefully it does, but there are the memories that I’ll bring with me forever.”

It ticked some crucial boxes for Norris.

Not only was it his first home grand prix victory, but it was the first time in his career that he’s claimed back-to-back wins.

It’s also the second time he’s led a McLaren one-two, following his maiden last time out in Austria.

It’s been only two races, but it’s beginning to look like momentum.

That’s not to say it’s at Piastri’s expense — momentum doesn’t have to be zero-sum — but Norris feels back in the game in a way he didn’t before this double-header.

He’s been largely free from mistakes, and if he isn’t on Piastri’s pace, he’s close.

The upgrades brought to Canada will undoubtedly be playing a role in generating some confidence in the car.

But Brown thinks it was Norris’s embarrassing crash with Piastri in that race that’s helped him find another level.

“I think Montreal was actually a nice moment for all of us in hindsight,” he said. “It just kind of took the air out of the balloon, and we just got it over with and everyone was talking about it.

“I kind of feel like it’s raised everyone’s confidence and comfort.”

At the halfway mark of the season, the championship gap has been slashed to eight points, down from 22 just over a week ago.

With two races to go before the midseason break, there’s plenty of time for Norris to set the agenda for the second half of the campaign after months of having terms dictated to him by his teammate.

NICO HÜLKENBERG BREAKS THE DROUGHT

When Nico Hülkenberg lined up for his debut race at the 2010 Bahrain Grand Prix as a highly rated German rookie he couldn’t possible have guessed he would have to wait 5593 days for his first podium appearance.

It was years ago he moved to the top of the undesirable leaderboard of most grand prix starts without standing on the podium, and it quickly became the story that dogged Hülkenberg for years.

At one stage it appeared he was destined to retire from Formula 1 without ever having stood on the podium, with the German squeezed out of the sport at the end of 2019 before making his comeback with Haas in 2023.

A podium seemed no more likely racing among the backmarkers, but at the 239th time of asking, Hülkenberg has sensationally thrown those shackles aside.

It’s by far the longest wait for any driver in Formula 1 history, the previous longest wait having been Carlos Sainz’s 101 starts.

The German veteran did it in style too, starting last on the grid — in this case 14th after six drivers started from pit lane — and nailing every key decision in the race to rocket up to third.

Lewis Hamilton loomed large in the second half of the race as his chief rival, the Ferrari driver surging up the order after strategy had cost him places.

But Hülkenberg was equal to the challenge to claim his first piece of Formula 1 silverware 15 years after his debut.

“It is surreal,” he told Sky Sports. “Massive blow yesterday [in qualifying] and then such a turn and swing of emotions from last on the grid.

“Thank you, Great Britain for this rain — the liquid sunshine, as they say. Obviously that made the result possible.

“I think we really hit the nail on the head today, made all the right calls at exactly the right moments. We stayed clean and made no mistakes.”

The result was significant for Sauber as much as Hülkenberg.

The podium is the team’s first in 13 years, dating back to Kamui Kobayashi’s third-place finish at the 2012 Japanese Grand Prix.

More than that, however, is that Hülkenberg’s 15 points rocketed Sauber from ninth to sixth in the championship, where it’s not only 18 points shy of Williams for fifth.

“It feels like we’re going in the right direction now,” team principal Jonathan Wheatley told Sky Sports. “What a performance. I’m so pleased.”

The fourth scoring weekend in a row, it’s a massive boost to the team that started the year looking nailed on for last in the championship on the eve Audi’s much-anticipated 2026 arrival.

While Sauber is a long way from where Audi will want to be in the medium term, these strong signs of progress promise the German marque that the road to the front won’t be as arduous as it looked in the last two years.

COLAPINTO STRUGGLES AGAIN AS RUMOURS INTENSIFY

This was not a good weekend for Franco Colapinto.

Colapinto replaced Jack Doohan six races into the season to be fast, not crash and score points — per the words of de facto team principal Flavio Briatore.

The sixth race of his own tenure ended with him slowest in qualifying after crashing out of Q1 and failing to take the start after a driveline issue, which some reports have put down to driver error.

Just as Doohan had been after his six races behind the wheel, Colapinto has no points to his name.

The problematic Alpine car is undeniably a bit part of the problem. Colapinto’s issue, however, is that Gasly pulled out a big performance in Silverstone that served to highlight the gap in quality between the veteran and the rookie.

Gasly improbably made it through to Q3 to qualify 10th. He started sixth and clung to that position to the finish to score the team’s best result of the year.

“I’m very happy for the whole team because it’s not the easiest of season for us,” he told Sky Sports. “We’re having quite a lot of struggles.

I think we all needed that. We know the situation we are in, but I like the mentality and the mindset I’m seeing from the guys. Every single time we are out there we just try to give our best.

“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but at least we always try and we keep trying. Today it really paid off.”

With rumours intensifying over the weekend that Alpine is negotiating to get Valtteri Bottas off the Mercedes bench and into Colapinto’s car sooner rather than later, the Argentine could have used a similarly boosting result.

Instead he heads into the two-weekend break before the Belgian Grand Prix with growing speculation he could be pulled out of his car imminently.

After all, Doohan was dropped for less.