Jolyon Palmer discovers key Oscar Piastri data that proves his British Grand Prix penalty was extremely harsh

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Oscar Piastri was handed a penalty during the British Grand Prix for an infringement behind the Safety Car, which effectively ended his chances of winning the race.

After overtaking Max Verstappen in the tricky conditions, Piastri was leading for most of the race when he had to deal with two Safety Car periods.

The second one had come out after a crash for Racing Bulls Isack Hadjar, and at the restart, Piastri could be seen braking aggressively, which caught out some cars behind on the Hangar straight.

Verstappen pulled alongside the Australian and complained over team radio that he was braking aggressively, before spinning as they exited Stowe on cold tyres. Jolyon Palmer compared the incident to what happened in the Canadian GP between Verstappen and George Russell.

The stewards took a dim view of Piastri’s manoeuvre and issued a 10-second time penalty, but Palmer has outlined one key piece of data that proves it was very harsh when discussing it on the F1 Nation podcast.

Jolyon Palmer thinks FIA Stewards were inconsistent with Oscar Piastri

Part of the reason why the stewards penalised Piastri was down to the amount of brake pressure that he applied, which they deemed to fall under ‘erratic’ driving under the Safety Car.

Palmer thinks they were not entirely consistent with their ruling, having looked at what Piastri did on the first Safety Car restart.

“I don’t think he’s done anything extraordinarily wrong. He’s obviously backed up the field on the safety car restart. He’s hit reasonable brake pressure to slow the car down, but I just don’t see it as a major moment,” said Palmer.

“He’d done exactly the same thing four laps before, which actually almost caused a little bit more drama further back in the field with Nico Hulkenberg not being happy and had to take a bit of avoiding action. But that one, the FIA didn’t even look at it.

“They reportedly weren’t best pleased and were debating whether they were going to look at it, but they just fundamentally didn’t. So then, to give it quite a significant penalty four laps later for something that looked, to me, really innocuous, it’s harsh.

“Also, we’ve been following this sport for a long time. Can you guys remember a single penalty for this sort of infringement before? Because I can’t, someone being erratic.”

READ MORE: McLaren driver Oscar Piastri’s life outside F1 from height to girlfriend

Why the FIA Stewards penalised Oscar Piastri in the British GP

There were two key pieces of data that the FIA Stewards used to determine Piastri had driven erratically under the Safety Car.

They found that Piastri had applied 59.2psi of brake pressure and slowed from 218kph (135mph) to 52kph (32mph), which caused Verstappen to brake harshly.

The FIA Stewards deemed that he contravened Article 55.15 of the F1 sporting regulations, which makes reference to “erratic braking” manoeuvres that can “endanger other drivers from the point at which the lights on the Safety Car turn off.”

Piastri tried to get McLaren to appeal the penalty and swap the positions, but they ultimately settled with the result, having secured a one-two victory.