Former driver and Sky Sports expert Martin Brundle has changed his tune on the penalty given to Oscar Piastri in Brazil, declaring it was “very harsh” despite initially saying it was a “fair cop”.

Brundle was one of the only experts on Monday to defend the decision to hand Piastri a 10-second penalty for causing a three-car collision that ultimately ended the race of Charles Leclerc.

It also saw the McLaren driver finish the race in fifth — and he heads to the next race in Las Vegas with a 24-point deficit to Lando Norris in the title race.

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Piastri reacts after disastrous crash | 00:46

“That’s the standard penalty,” Brundle said of the hefty punishment initially.

“There were no mitigating circumstances, so I’m not surprised.

“He had to have a go, there’s no doubt about that, but the penalty is a fair cop.”

But the day after the race in his column for Sky Sports, Brundle said that he felt Piastri was harshly dealt with given how the crash looked, rather than the actual facts.

“The problem for Oscar is that the initial optics didn’t look at all good in that he’d locked up, hit (Kimi) Antonelli’s rear axle with his front, skittled two cars including one into instant retirement, and gained two places,” Brundle wrote.

Of the penalty, however, he said that after further review, it “was very harsh”.

Classy Piastri congratulates Norris | 00:37

“There was a clear mitigating circumstance that he was squeezed by the Mercedes, and that this action contributed to his lock up and contact.”

Nonetheless, Brundle said that Piastri had to receive some form of punishment given, if he wasn’t punished, it would’ve suggested that Antonelli was wholly to blame.

“It would have been easy to justify reducing that to a five-second penalty – as Oscar said, ‘I can’t just disappear’,” he wrote.

“Considering it as a typical racing incident would be marginal. No penalty at all, and therefore by default wholly blaming Antonelli, not realistic.”

“Oh my god!” Norris on Piastri crash | 00:11

The ruling on the incident, however, left Piastri wholly to blame — something which has drawn widespread criticism, including from Leclerc himself.

“Oscar was optimistic but Kimi knew he was on the inside I think, and he kind of did the corner like Oscar was never there,” he said.

“For me, the blame isn’t all on Oscar even if he was optimistic, it could’ve been avoided.”

The rumbling around the decision continued to linger on Tuesday.

The Race’s Ben Anderson said it was simply a “racing incident”, echoing Brundle’s call that the lockup played a decisive role in the decision.

“Piastri’s penalty I feel was a bit harsh, as there were three cars in the mix there, so you can’t say it was a pure loss of control from Piastri that created the contact with Antonelli,” he wrote.

“I think the stewards have probably used the brake lock to blame Piastri, but I don’t think that accident happens that way without Leclerc there too, because Antonelli would have been able to give the McLaren more space.”

“The blame is not all on Oscar!” | 00:36

Meanwhile, his colleague Scott Mitchell-Malm argued that Piastri’s penalty should be the “last straw” for F1’s “flawed” racing guidelines.

As explained by foxsports.com.au after the race, stewards make decisions on incidents informed by set ‘guidelines’, which are not ‘regulations’.

Mitchell-Malm wrote that the guidelines are being treated as “definitive” rather than as they were intended.

“The guidelines say that the car on the inside doesn’t need to be left space if they do not hold their front wheel at least level with the wing mirror of the car they are trying to overtake. So Piastri has, in essence, been punished for not barrelling in more, probably clobbering Antonelli in the process and taking out Leclerc anyway, just to claim a specific bit of track position by the apex,” he wrote.

“This wholly two-dimensional approach to devising racing rules makes ‘who needs to do what, by where and when’ so tortured that shared accountability has gone out the window.”