Piastri blames F1 energy rules for Silverstone chaos

Oscar Piastri said Formula 1’s current energy-deployment rules turned the opening of the British Grand Prix into a chaotic, luck-heavy contest that ruined his race at Silverstone.

The McLaren driver finished 11th after contact on the first lap broke his front wing and forced an early stop, dropping him to the back of the field. Piastri said his race “came undone on the opening lap” when he was caught in a three-car fight approaching Turn 6.

Explaining the incident to media including RacingNews365, Oscar Piastri said: “I got sandwiched on the way into Turn 6, basically.” He added: “I broke my front wing and had the box, and that was it.”

For Piastri, the bigger issue was not just the contact itself but the way this year’s regulations have increased the influence of electrical deployment from the power unit. With drivers choosing where to use that energy around the lap, he said the resulting speed differences made Silverstone’s opening phase feel like “carnage” and “almost like a multi-class race start.”

He said he was trying to overtake Lindblad and felt he had more power, only for Lawson to come by with what seemed like even more. “It’s just a mess,” Piastri said. “You’re trying to judge your speed to the car in front of you, look at the car behind you, but to be honest, I’m surprised that doesn’t happen more often.”

Piastri said the same problem is affecting overtaking more broadly because the current boost system forces drivers to commit early, before they know exactly what the cars around them will do. Speaking to PlanetF1.com and other accredited media, he said there is now a “massive element of luck” in passing moves, especially in the opening laps when several cars are fighting at once.

He pointed to the sprint as an example of what he believes the rules can produce. Piastri said he used the boost to attack George Russell and defend from Charles Leclerc, only to close too quickly to Russell to complete the move and then realize Leclerc had not deployed at all. “So in the end I didn’t need to push it, so like it’s just a massive game of flipping a coin, basically,” he said.

That, in Piastri’s view, is what now defines too many of these battles: not only who positions the car best, but who has battery available at the right moment and guesses correctly about everyone else. He warned the effect could be even more severe later in the season at circuits such as Spa and Monza, where repeated straights and partial-throttle sections make the gain from saving or spending energy much larger. Piastri said those tracks will be “sad” because the delta from deployment choice is “huge.”