Oscar Piastri has said he would have been “surprised” if he had received a penalty for an alleged pit lane protocol breach in FP2 for the Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix.
The McLaren driver was placed under investigation by the stewards for potentially re-entering the ‘fast lane’ of the pitlane too soon after the red flag caused by Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s spin early in the session.
Antonelli spun at the second Lesmo around 20 minutes into the second hour of running on Friday, curtailing the Mercedes driver’s involvement.
Piastri met with the stewards at 6.20 PM local time to face the charge, but was given only a reprimand.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1 after the session, the Australian seemed relaxed about the situation, saying he would be shocked if he was to be penalised.
“Yeah, I think we just misjudged, got confused with the message in the timing system and were a little bit early, but no concerns,” he said in his explanation of the incident.
Normally, the precedent for this is set in qualifying sessions, so a penalty received for a breach within a free practice session might be deemed a surprise.
When asked if he thinks this would mean that no further action will be taken, Piastri indicated that this would, or should, be the case.
“Yeah, I mean, it might be a warning or something, but I’d be surprised if it’s a sporting penalty,” he said.
The stewards’ report read: “Car 81 was released from its garage at 17:13.50 whereas the re-start of the session was confirmed by Race Control on timing page 3 at 17:14.09, this clearly being in breach of item 22.2 of the Race Director’s Event Notes.
“The team admitted during the hearing that they made a mistake as they reacted to the “track clear” message instead of reacting to the message indicating the re-start time of the session.
“The Stewards acknowledge that, in contrast to prior incidents of similar nature happening in Qualifying, no significant sporting advantage could potentially be gained as this happened in Free Practice and therefore consider a reprimand to the competitor to be appropriate.”
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