Former Formula 1 race winner and driver steward Johnny Herbert believes Oscar Piastri‘s penalty that cost the McLaren driver victory at the 2025 British Grand Prix was the first sign of pressure on him in the race for the drivers’ championship.
The Australian has led the way since winning the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and, despite struggles including the collision with Piastri that saw him fail to finish in Canada, Lando Norris has cut the gap to just eight points at the halfway stage of the season with two victories in two races.
Norris‘ triumph at his home race came after Piastri was hit with a 10-second penalty for excessive braking at a safety car restart, where Max Verstappen was forced to take evasive action and a number of cars further down the pack fanned out across the track.
Despite his annoyance after that race and the collision instigated by Norris in Canada, there is yet to be a fallout within the team that is almost expected when teammates battle for the title and has been evidenced by Hamilton-Rosberg, Vettel-Webber and Senna-Prost in F1’s past.
Assessing the mistakes by both drivers and the current dynamic at McLaren when speaking exclusively to Total-Motorsport, Herbert said: “Well the collision in Canada was unfortunately a bit of a clumsy one from Lando, it’s not like he drove into the side of Oscar and took them both out or in a racy way, it was just a misjudgement that went very wrong for him at the end of the day, and actually wasn’t such a big deal.
“Psychologically, that was a positive for Oscar because Lando made the mistake and Lando has gone out.
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“Then we go to Silverstone and have all the shenanigans with George [Russell] and Max behind the safety car [in Canada, where Red Bull protested the race result over similar antics from the Mercedes driver] as well, I am sure that was all discussed in the drivers’ briefings, and then Oscar puts himself in that position when he really shouldn’t have put himself in that position.
“You’ve got to try very hard, especially when you look in the mirror and you’ve got Max Verstappen there because you know he is going to try and capitalise on the type of braking Oscar did.”
Pressure will grow on Piastri after penalty
Pointing to Piastri‘s reaction to the penalty and suggesting it was a change in tone for the championship leader, Herbert added: “Then you saw – and it was [expected] that it would be the ‘cool Oscar’ but that’s not what we saw afterwards – he was disappointed and didn’t agree with the penalty.
“But he put himself in that position and it is pressure, a little bit of pressure. I never had it to the same extent in Formula 1 – I had it in another way I suppose with Benetton – but in everything else I had done before, I can understand where that pressure starts to build.
“When I won F3 and won my first race in F3000, it is a very different pressure to an F1 world championship. It is your team-mate you are racing against and while Max isn’t really in the mix, what he is in the mix for is taking points away from either driver and probably enjoying that when he has the opportunity.
“But it will be growing and growing as we get towards the end of the season and after the break even more so, but it is tight.”
With Norris on a hot streak and the tension rising inside McLaren, the world will be watching to see how Piastri responds to this growing pressure.
