Oscar Piastri says he is concerned that a precedent has been set after Formula 1's Belgian Grand Prix stewards declined to penalise Charles Leclerc for their contact.

On lap eight of 44, Piastri found himself on the outside of Leclerc on the run down to Les Combes before the Ferrari driver moved across under braking to cover off a potential overtake.

The late move left Piastri with no real place to go and led to contact and damage to his car, described by McLaren as being to the floor.

Leclerc was investigated for the incident, but ultimately escaped without a penalty while Piastri was left unhappy after deeming the pair "very lucky not to have a bigger crash".

In choosing not to penalise Leclerc, the stewards determined that while Piastri "had achieved some overlap with car #16", his front axle was not ahead of Leclerc's and reasoned that from their perspective "there was no realistic possibility of car #81 completing the overtake from that position".

They also felt that Leclerc had not crowded Piastri off the track and had followed the normal racing line "by moving slightly to the left to open up the corner" - with contact occurring "as a result of both cars' positions".

But Piastri contested the decision to take no action, saying: "I don't really know where I was supposed to go.

"I'm not saying it needed to be a penalty necessary, but at least a black and white flag or something like that.

"Because if we think that that's fine, it's one thing having touches like that, but even just the incentive of knowing that you can leave everyone the absolute bare minimum space and get away with it, that's not the nicest place to be."

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella echoed Piastri's sentiments and called to make sure that if a car is "defending the inside [it] does leave enough space" as it could cause a major incident.

Leclerc finished the race in second and said: "Luckily, it didn't have any consequences for either my race or his race [Piastri's], so that’s good."

But Stella later revealed that Piastri, who was passed late on by Lewis Hamilton and finished fifth, had lost "between two to three tenths" per lap due to the loss of downforce after the collision.

"The main way in which this manifested itself, this damage, was actually the fact that he needed to use the tyres more than the competitors to stay with them in the first part of the stint, and then he had very high degradation in the second part of the stint," said Stella.

"Apart from that, I think Oscar has actually learned quite a bit through the weekend… and I think today, without the damage, he would have been there."

Our verdict

There was shared puzzlement between Edd Straw, Ben Anderson and Val Khorounzhiy on the post-race edition of The Race F1 Podcast at the decision not to award Leclerc a penalty.

Their main area of confusion was around the stewards' justification, which appeared to deem Piastri partly at fault for going for an overtaking opportunity that may not have existed.

"I don't necessarily get it and I didn't particularly understand the explanation," said Khorounzhiy. "Piastri's tyre is firmly on the white line, you can trace the straight nature of it.

“And for some reason the stewards have decided that, at that point, Leclerc was entitled to take up the racing line through the corner because, in their words, Piastri wasn't far enough alongside and he had no hope of completing the overtaking move.”

Anderson felt the stewards had "treated it like the straight is the outside of the corner" and in doing so "it seems like they've applied a rule that should apply further round to Les Combes, kind of where [George] Russell was with [Lewis] Hamilton".

"To me they do not apply the same," he added.

Straw felt it was "ridiculous" and said "motor racing doesn't work if you can do that", with he and Anderson in agreement that Leclerc's move constituted crowding - which the stewards' agreement specifically said he had not done.

"As a general rule, if you're on a straight and someone is doing something to you when you are driving straight, on a straight, that requires you to move out the way, they are in the wrong in every case, because otherwise, racing doesn’t work," said Straw.

"If you're heading into a bit of track that's narrowing and there's not space, you've got to think about it and do something. But I just don't see how racing works if you allow that."

He added that was "really concerning for me" and suspected the issue would be raised in future drivers' briefings.

That line of discussion was prompted by a question from Njenga in The Race Members' Club, on whether Leclerc has been allowed to get away with late movements under braking.

"I was interested by the aspect that Charles does this all the time because I hadn't really picked up on that," said Anderson. "But when it was being discussed live, both of you said, 'Oh yeah, he's got a bit of a tendency to do that'."

Straw felt Leclerc has "got it in him, but he gets away with it so I don't blame him".

"That's fine, isn't it?" he said. "There's always this thing of trying to move just to open up a little bit into the corner or squeeze people and if you don't clamp down on it, if you don't say, 'No, you can't do that', then that's a problem.

“It basically said that Piastri almost deserved to be hit because he was never going to complete the overtaking manoeuvre. Well, how do you know he was never going to? There was nothing wrong with him being there."

Khorounzhiy agreed. "There's just value in positioning your car into a corner [in the way Piastri did], so that if it's legal that it compromises the other driver's line: you do want to force them to go more inside and more tight into the corner, just in terms of the momentum that they're going to carry.

"Is that illegal now? Do you deserve to be hit then? Can you be elbowed out of the way? It's bad. It's so bad it makes me think I've missed something. It makes me think that I've missed some crucial, obvious smoking gun piece of evidence."