Did Piastri deserve penalty for Brazil GP clash? Our writers have their say

Oscar Piastri’s 10-second penalty for colliding with Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Charles Leclerc at Turn 1 during the Brazil Grand Prix divided opinion in the Formula 1 paddock.

While Piastri defended his actions, with both McLaren team boss Andrea Stella and Leclerc pointing to a portion of blame needing to fall on Antonelli, the FIA stewards judged the Australian driver “wholly” at fault which led to the 10s penalty.

So, was the call to penalise Piastri right? Our writers have their say.

No, racing guidelines need more open interpretation – Filip Cleeren

Piastri deserved a penalty if you apply F1’s racing guidelines strictly rather than use them as exactly that — guidelines. But in a three-way collision it made more commons sense to leave it as a racing incident. I disagree with the stewards’ conclusion that Piastri was wholly to blame for the incident as Antonelli turned in aggressively despite have more space to work with between himself and Leclerc on the outside — Antonelli admitting he had lost sight of Piastri.

The guidelines’ notion that Piastri didn’t deserve any space on the inside still feels weird to me. He may not have been fully alongside at the point of entry, but he was there moments before and then lost ground as Antonelli was able to brake later on the easier line into the corner. Yes, Piastri briefly locked up, but that didn’t alter his trajectory much and he was still in control at the point of contact, and would have easily made the corner.

This whole shtick of having to be alongside the outside car’s mirror may make sense to lawyers on paper, and works reasonably well on very short 90-degree corners with a clearly defined apex. But where exactly is the apex at Interlagos’ much more complex Turn 1? And what should Piastri have done instead when Antonelli had a poor exit out of the final corner? Not attempt to race at all?

I’m not saying people should be allowed to stick their nose in half-heartedly and demand racing room, but by following the guidelines to the letter we have deviated too far in an opposite, counterintuitive direction. Rules should be there to encourage wheel-to-wheel racing, not to discourage it by trying to apportion blame whenever possible.

The overarching issue for Piastri is that given his worsening championship position and poor qualifying result, the Australian had little choice but to go for these risky moves, opening him up to all sorts of trouble. So if Piastri has to blame himself for one thing, then it’s not having been ahead of Antonelli and Leclerc to begin with.

Yes, Piastri took too much of a risk against drivers who had nothing to lose — Oleg Karpov

I always find discussions about penalties a bit pointless – because there’s almost no racing incident that would leave the whole world unanimously agreeing on what the sanction should be. In the end, every case is different in its details, and it’s impossible to create any sort of concise guidelines for stewards to judge them by. These discussions always reach the same point: at some stage, someone has to make a decision. And in Brazil, as at any other F1 event, there were people appointed to do exactly that. They had to make the call – and there’s little point in arguing whether it was the right one, because the definition of “right” often depends on which driver you support.

Piastri may disagree with the outcome – yet there’s also a question of whether he put himself at risk by his own doing, placing his McLaren in a three-way braking contest with two other drivers who had almost nothing to lose at this stage of the championship. Should Antonelli have given Piastri more space? Perhaps – given that Leclerc took a very conservative line into the corner. But did Oscar himself put a little too much trust in the other two being reasonable? And even if all three had somehow made it through that corner side by side, Piastri would have ended up on the outside of the next turn anyway. He probably would have needed to back out of it sooner or later, wouldn’t he?

Unfortunately for the Australian, he just seems to have found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time far too often over the last few races. And that move – at least to me (someone who’s never raced competitively, which is a fair point) – looked like an attempt to clear two cars that separated him from his main rival at the very first opportunity. Perhaps that was simply too risky. All things considered, it could have ended much worse for him than it actually did.

No, racing rules too rigid in 50/50 scenarios – Jake Boxall-Legge

When the letter of the racing guidelines was applied, it was unsurprising that Piastri ended up staring down the barrel of a 10-second penalty — but ultimately, it nonetheless demonstrates how the guidelines are flawed. When you look at the run to Turn 1 on the lap six restart, Piastri is alongside Antonelli and very visible down the Mercedes’ left-hand side.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari

Photo by: Nelson Almeida / AFP via Getty Images

Antonelli’s later braking into the corner takes Piastri outside of the window deemed acceptable for the attacking driver to make contact. It’s a split-second switch, but one in which rules are applied on a frame-by-frame basis. While F1 drivers are considered superhuman, they don’t view races with the same frame rate as a fly.

This isn’t apportioning blame to Antonelli in lieu of Piastri; both drivers had a part to play in the incident. However, the racing guidelines are designed to provide a point of delineation to assign blame. It’s a racing incident, but the stewards rarely come to that conclusion beyond the opening lap of the race; Piastri locked up, while Antonelli turned in on him and perhaps not offered quite enough space. Poor old Leclerc had no chance.

In the current global culture, dominated by social media hot takes and narrative revisionism, a scapegoat is quickly identified — even in situations where two opposing parties are at fault. F1 needs to normalise the notion that, sometimes, things just happen and both drivers can contribute to a situation. However, the can of worms has been opened — and in the situation demonstrated in Sao Paulo, Piastri would be justified in feeling aggrieved by the penalty.

No, Antonelli shares the blame to make this a racing incident – Kevin Turner

Right, first of all, any racing driver on the planet would have gone for that gap, given Antonelli’s mediocre restart. Championship fight or not, nobody backs out of that.

Secondly, Piastri was alongside the Mercedes and Ferrari before the braking zone. That alone makes a nonsense of the line in the stewards’ report that said that “Piastri did not establish the required overlap prior to and at the apex, as his front axle was not alongside the mirror of Car 12, as defined in the Driving Standard Guidelines for overtaking on the inside of a corner”.

The ‘overlap’ rule is surely designed to determine whether a legitimate move is being made or not, or if a driver has left it too late. It does not take into account the circumstances leading up to that moment. Piastri wasn’t diving in late on the brakes, he was already there – saying he wasn’t alongside enough is a bit like asking the driver on the outside to deliberately brake too late to make it look like they’ve been forced off. We’ve seen certain other drivers do that since this ‘guideline’ arrived…

Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes

Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images

Antonelli, to his credit, did not do that. But he also did not give Piastri enough room. You could argue that both Piastri’s lock-up and the ‘fact’ that he wasn’t alongside enough was because he could see the Mercedes was starting to squeeze him – the Australian was trying to avoid contact.

The stewards’ report says Piastri “made contact” with Antonelli, but he was still tight up to the white line to the left and hadn’t drifted across to the middle of the road. Antonelli turned in and didn’t leave enough room, making contact inevitable.

What’s frustrating is that Leclerc, who said he felt the clash was down to Antonelli as well as Piastri, had given the Mercedes room. There was enough space to the Italian’s right to give Piastri somewhere to exist.

So, would I have given Antonelli a penalty instead? No. Sometimes it’s OK to call something a racing incident, even if social media – and the nature of the ‘Driving Standard Guidelines’ – demands otherwise.

No, it was silly from Piastri but still no penalty – Ed Hardy

In the immediate aftermath, I agreed that Piastri was responsible for the collision because it just seemed like a desperate lunge down the inside. With Leclerc on the right and Antonelli in the middle, Piastri should have known better to not go for glory at the first opportunity because there was little chance of three cars going through the esses side by side.

He should have remained patient and waited for his opportunity because Interlagos has quite a few of them — Turn 4 springing to mind. It was also only lap six, so why attempt a win-it-or-bin-it move early on when you’re fighting for a championship?

Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Kym Illman / Getty Images

It all just showed traits of a driver who knows the title is slipping away from him and he needed to conjure something up to save his hopes. Piastri could see Lando Norris ahead and maybe he thought that unless he made the overtake that lap, his team-mate would have just sailed into the distance.

But, although I still think much of the above applies, further reviews of the incident do show more and more that Antonelli’s inexperience came through. Instead of noticing the room that was to the right of him, the Mercedes rookie just went straight for the apex as though Piastri wasn’t there.

That is also the viewpoint of Leclerc, while Piastri and Stella have also come out stating the penalty was incorrect. So many of us here haven’t raced professionally and so there are times where one just has to listen to the experts and when many of them are saying the same thing, then it is likely that they are onto something.

It takes two to tango after all. So, even though Piastri should have known an outcome like that was possible, and that in championship fights this late on a driver shouldn’t put himself in such a vulnerable position, Antonelli didn’t help by cutting across. Therefore it was just a coming together and stewards should have moved on, rather than ruining somebody’s race with such a large penalty.

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— The Autosport.com Team