FIA penalty prompts cheeky Piastri request

Oscar Piastri made a cheeky request to his McLaren team during the British Grand Prix, in the hopes of maintaining his championship lead.

Piastri's McLaren team-mate Lando Norris claimed victory at Silverstone in front of his adoring home fans to make it back-to-back wins and reduce Piastri's championship lead down to just eight points with 12 races left in the season.

The win for Norris came after a controversial penalty for Piastri, who was slammed with a 10-second time penalty for his driving under safety car conditions.

Piastri braked hard when the safety car lights went out, causing Max Verstappen behind to take avoiding action, but after race stewards deemed it to have been illegal from Piastri, the Australian was left seething.

The 24-year-old was fired up during his trip to the cooldown room post-race, and in his interview he revealed why he asked his McLaren team for a cheeky swap around of the two cars following his penalty.

During the race, Piastri said over team radio: "If you don't think it was fair, I think we should swap back and race."

Speaking to media after Silverstone, he revealed: "I don't think there's anything wrong with it, Lando didn't do anything wrong. I don't think it would have been particularly fair to have swapped, but I thought I'd at least ask.

"It doesn't change much for the championship, I feel like I did a good job today, I did what I needed to. That's all I need, and I will use the frustration to make sure I win some more races later."

Will Piastri win the championship?

The two McLaren drivers are likely to be the only two competitors in this year's title race.

Four-time world champion Verstappen has only won two of the first 12 races as Red Bull struggle to give him a car capable of challenging for the championship, and he is now 69 points behind Piastri.

Norris has the experience of having already been in a title battle, with 2024 just going the way of Verstappen, but the mistakes he made in the latter stages of that campaign were also present at the start of this campaign.

Piastri has been the more consistent of the two so far, but Norris' ability to pull out back-to-back victories just when the gap was starting to look insurmountable shows the determination he has to try and secure his first world championship title.

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