The FIA have announced a harsh penalty verdict for McLaren after Oscar Piastri made an error at the Canadian Grand Prix.
F1’s current championship leader was investigated during FP1 in Montreal, after his McLaren was caught speeding in the pit-lane.
For the Canadian GP, the pit-lane speed limit is set at 80km/h but Piastri exceeded this at the speed of 80.3km/h, barely perceptible to the viewer but a flagrant breach of the rules to the stewards.
Whilst it may seem harsh to issue a penalty for a miniscule infringement, the stewards penalise any team or driver who exceeds the limit with Piastri’s McLaren F1 team receiving a €100 (£85) fine.
The amount fined reflects how minor Piastri’s speed was, with the FIA announcing much heavier fines than McLaren’s in F1 history.
In 2021, Red Bull were fined €1000 (£850) when Sergio Perez exceeded the pit-lane speed limit by 40kph, and Williams were also fined €1000 when Carlos Sainz exceeded the pit-lane speed limit by 13.7km/h in Japan this year.
FIA penalty announcement highlights F1’s fine margins
The stewards then went even further later on in Montreal as Sainz’s Williams team-mate Alex Albon earned his team the same €100 fine as Piastri, despite the fact that the 29-year-old was only doing 80.1 km/h in the pit-lane.
However, F1 drivers are used to fine margins being the difference between receiving a penalty or not, whether that is the white line that defines track limits or the thickness of the plank that sits underneath their cars.
Ferrari learnt this to their dismay at the Chinese GP earlier this year, where both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were disqualified after a post-race inspection on both of their cars.
Leclerc’s car was 1kg under the 800kg car weight limit, whilst Hamilton’s plank underneath his Ferrari had excessive wear by half a millimetre.
Thankfully for Piastri, he didn’t have to reach into his own wallet to pay for the speeding fine and was spared the harsher punishments his F1 rivals have received.
