Was Piastri’s costly penalty for three-car collision harsh?

Oscar Piastri’s fading championship challenge suffered another setback in the Sao Paulo Grand Prix when he finished fifth after a penalty for colliding with Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli in an incident that caused the retirement of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

A day after crashing out of the Sprint after running over a wet kerb, Piastri dropped a season-high 24 points behind McLaren team-mate Lando Norris with just three rounds to go after the Briton won Sunday’s race and the Australian finished one place lower than where he qualified following a 10-second penalty for the incident.

Piastri’s hopes of challenging Norris unravelled at the start of lap six when the race restarted following an early Safety Car.

With Norris leading as the field raced towards the Senna Esses, second-placed Antonelli came under attack from Leclerc and Piastri behind with the cars going three abreast into the braking zone.

Piastri went for a move down the inside of the Mercedes but the two cars made contact after the McLaren locked a wheel, with the impact buffeting Antonelli into the luckless Leclerc on his outside and causing race-ending damage to the Ferrari.

Piastri moved into second as Antonelli also ran wide but the stewards soon investigated the incident and ruled that the McLaren driver had been “wholly responsible for the collision”.

They handed him a 10-second time penalty, which he served at his first pit stop, with two penalty points also added to his superlicence, in a sanction that was “considered appropriate and consistent with recent precedents”.

Stewards said as Piastri’s “front axle was not alongside the mirror of [Antonelli’s car], as defined in the Driving Standard Guidelines for overtaking on the inside of a corner” he had been fully to blame.

Piastri, however, saw the situation differently when speaking after the race.

Asked by Sky Sports F1 if he had any regrets about going for the move, he said: “No, I don’t think so.

“I had a very clear opportunity, I went for it. The other two on the outside braked quite late. There was obviously a bit of a lock-up into the corner but that’s because I could see Kimi was not going to give me any space.

“I can’t disappear but the decision is what it is.”

Without having yet had chance to fully review the incident in the immediate aftermath of the race, team principal Andrea Stella said that “for the moment we respect the decision of the stewards, take it on the chin and move forwards”.

But Zak Brown, McLaren’s chief executive who was watching the race from elsewhere having not been in Brazil, said in a social media post congratulating the team on Norris’ race win that Piastri’s penalty had been “harsh”.

Where did Leclerc and Antonelli think the blame lay?

Despite the frustration of seeing his race ended almost before it had begun, Leclerc said Piastri should not have had all the blame pinned on him.

“Oscar was optimistic but Kimi knew that Oscar was on the inside, I think, and he kind of did the corner like Oscar was never there,” said Leclerc.

“For me the blame is not all on Oscar. Yes, it was optimistic, but this could have been avoided. I’m frustrated. At the end of the day I’m not angry with Oscar or Kimi, these things happen, but I wouldn’t go as far as saying it was all Oscar’s fault. I don’t think it is.”

Antonelli, who had been caught in the middle of the two after losing momentum at the restart, said he had tried to give Piastri room and that the Australian had locked up and simply slid into him.

“I had a bad restart. I got some wheelspin. A bit too aggressive on power,” said the Italian, who went on to claim a career-best second after holding off a charging Max Verstappen in the closing laps.

“To be fair, I was trying to cover Charles but then I saw Piastri coming. Obviously it wasn’t the best position to be in [in the middle of them]. I tried to brake late without locking up or anything and leave space to Charles and then try not to close excessively on the inside because when I broke I didn’t see Piastri anymore. But then obviously he locked up, started to miss the apex and then he hit me. It was a big hit, to be fair, and just a shame to end Charles’ race.”

What was the pundits’ verdicts?

In their post-race analysis of the incident, the Sky Sports F1 pundits expressed sympathy for Piastri.

Describing it as a “racing incident” in which Antonelli also shared some of the blame, Jamie Chadwick said: “The person that hasn’t necessarily used all the room available to him is Kimi, for me. So I’m on the side where I think Oscar has been hard done by.

“I think Kimi could still maybe have held the position but made Oscar’s life easier and not risked that bit of contact in this instance.

“He’s not, in my opinion, locked up because he’s out of control. He has locked up because he has seen Kimi turning in a bit of him and his natural reaction is to press the brake pedal a little bit harder, turn as much left as you can towards the white line, causing that lock-up.

“But even with the lock-up he’s still as far to the white line as he can be and still hasn’t been given the room by Kimi.”

Karun Chandhok said: “The only thing is the way the guidelines are at the moment they’ve looked at it and gone ‘well, he wasn’t alongside front axle to mirror at the apex’. But I think that is a slightly flawed thing to apply here because if Oscar had gone dive-bombing in to try and get to the apex first, as we saw Max doing in Mexico, Antonelli could have then wiped out Leclerc even earlier in the corner.

“I actually think this is where, once again like Mexico, the guidelines don’t quite work. I agree with Jamie, it’s quite a strong penalty, Maybe a five [second one] because the consequences were bad for the two other cars. So, for me, maybe a five second would have been ok.”

Formula 1’s thrilling title race continues with the Las Vegas Grand Prix on November 21-23, live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with NOW – no contract, cancel anytime

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