Oscar Piastri was only able to celebrate his second place on the grid in Imola for two hours. Then he has to clear the field. In the first segment of qualifying, he and his McLaren got in the way of Kevin Magnussen’s Haas. The stewards got involved and saw a very clear case before them.
Piastri received three penalties, standard for this offense. This means he slips back to fifth place on the starting grid behind his teammate Lando Norris and behind both Ferraris. Particularly bitter for the McLaren driver: the incident occurred at a time when he no longer had to be on the track.
It was the last minutes of Q1. For Magnussen it was everything – he was below the line, but as Nico Hülkenberg, who finished tenth, proved, the Haas had the pace for significantly more. Everything was irrelevant for Magnussen, because in the middle of the Tamburello chicane he ran into Piastri, who was slowly strolling along the ideal line.
Piastri had only just come out of the box. “When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t see any cars coming,” he said later in the press conference. He pointed out to the stewards that the track layout made a bend there. When he finally saw Magnussen just before the chicane, he tried to accelerate, but it was too late.
McLaren box misses Magnussen warning
In the event of a confusing area, it is the race engineer’s responsibility to warn the driver. However, the engineer in question was busy giving Piastri the information about the delta times for the maximum lap time. It was only too late that the pits realized that Magnussen was on a fast lap. This resulted in a speed difference of approximately 140 km/h.
The stewards checked similar situations involving other drivers and found that elsewhere they were always able to give timely warnings. Consequently, there is no doubt in their minds that Magnussen was unnecessarily hindered. The main blame lies with the team’s lack of warning, hence three penalty places.
“The warning from the race engineer was a bit late,” admitted the team boss Andrea Stella after qualifying. He praised how Piastri tried to avoid Magnussen. When the stewards’ verdict came at the end of his press round, he added: “We accept the verdict and will improve our processes.”
Piastri receives penalty for pointless final Q1 laps
Bitter for Piastri: The fact that he came onto the track a second time at this point, shortly before the end of Q1, was practically pointless. With a 1:15.940, he had already booked his ticket to Q2 promotion nine minutes before the end. For the backbenchers, who later put on fresh tires, this time was unattainable. Piastri’s buffer in the final tally was seven tenths.
Nevertheless, McLaren sent him out again on used soft tires in the last few minutes. For top teams, this is often just a safety process so they can react if, contrary to expectations, the track improves significantly in the last few minutes. Sometimes teams just want to keep the car up to temperature, especially the brakes. In this specific case, Piastri didn’t even set a time. Just an outlap, then an inlap.