Pierre Gasly hits out at 'completely ridiculous' British GP penalty

Gasly made contact with Perez in the closing laps at Silverstone as they battled for 10th place, and after reviewing the incident the stewards gave Gasly a five-second penalty.

That promoted Perez to 10th and dropped Gasly back to 13th, with Stoffel Vandoorne and Lance Stroll also benefiting. In addition Gasly received two penalty points.

"For me it's ridiculous, completely ridiculous," Gasly told Autosport. "That's racing, and honestly there was really small contact.

"It happens sometimes. We have a two-metre wide car, on a track which is probably 12 metres wide, so at some point sometimes you have contact.

"Clearly this wasn't a big hit. For me it didn't deserve to have a penalty.

"And if you look at all the situations that happened in this race, between [Kevin] Magnussen and [Romain] Grosjean, no further action, [Carlos] Sainz [Jr] and Grosjean, who completely hit the wall, no further action.

"And for something like this, a five-second penalty and two penalty points, it's completely ridiculous.

"Looking at the last race, I got hit on lap one [by Vandoorne], I lost half of my floor on the rear, and no further action.

"Then there was also the incident quite similar for the race winner [Max Verstappen] in lap one, and no further action.

"They need to do something. To be inconsistent like this in unacceptable at a high level.

"There is nothing which explains such a penalty. If they don't do things for others, then they shouldn't penalise this."

Gasly was not surprised that Perez presented a strong case to the stewards.

"He finished P11 without a point, so he tried to blame me as much as he can," he said.

"I've told him honestly I enjoyed the fight, it was close racing, close wheels, and at the end of the day, we are racing drivers, that's what we should push for.

"By doing this sort of penalty it's just stopping us from racing, so it's a big shame.

"Doing this pushes the drivers not to take any risks, and have boring races, and no overtaking except on the straight with the DRS, which is honestly not exciting at all."