The FIA Formula 1 race stewards explained the process behind penalising McLaren’s Oscar Piastri at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Priastri was handed a five-second time penalty at the start of Vegas’ night race, having incorrectly placed his McLaren on the grid.
The Australian driver placed his front tyres outside the eight-placed grid slot, calling the stewards into action.
“The Stewards reviewed positioning/marshalling system data, video, and determined that part of the contact patch of Car 81’s front tyres were outside the lines of the grid box at the time of the Start Signal,” the stewards’ report read.
“This is a breach of Article 48.1.c of the FIA Formula Sporting Regulations. This attracts a mandatory time penalty under Article 54.3 of the Sporting Regulations. Given the limited extent of the breach, we determined that a 5-second time penalty was appropriate.”
Piastri’s penalty put him on the back foot as he served his penalty during the first round of pit stops.
The McLaren driver ultimately finished seventh behind McLaren team-mate Lando Norris, who was able to take a free pit stop in front of Piastri towards the end of the race.
“I didn’t feel like I did anything different or overshot it,” Piastri said of his false start. “But, I mean, clearly I must have been a bit out.
“It made a little bit of an impact at the start after the first pit stop, but that was nowhere near the biggest problem I had tonight.”
Oscar Piastri rues ‘pretty poor’ Las Vegas performance
Piastri and McLaren’s Vegas GP was in his own words, “pretty poor.”
The Australian was a step behind his team-mate Norris throughout, and McLaren didn’t have an answer for the supremely confident Mercedes duo, nor Ferrari or the Red Bull in the hands of Max Verstappen.
Piastri said that after qualifying the McLaren team had “you know, we’ve got “some ideas why it didn’t really come to us in Q3, but the race I think was more difficult than we expected.”
The cool temperatures meant graining was a significant issue around the Las Vegas Strip Circuit and Piastri was particularly afflicted.
While the likes of Geroge Russell and Lewis Hamilton could breeze ahead, Piastri had little impact on proceedings at the front of the race.
“Especially on my side [of the McLaren garage], it was a much, much more difficult race with the tyres than I expected going in,” he explained.
“I mean, we knew it would be tough with graining, but the graining was a lot, lot worse than I feared.
“So, yeah, that part was quite unexpected, so I think we need to understand why that was the case.”
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