Jolyon Palmer's GP2 Diary - Silverstone

The British Grand Prix weekend is normally one of my favourites of the year. The crowd is one of the biggest we have and they are very supportive of the British drivers.

I parked the car up by our garage in the support pit lane and went into the truck to watch the end of the race. I was then amazed to see that Canamasas' penalty for taking me out was a stop go penalty (the same penalty Marcus Ericsson got for squeezing Felipe Nasr a bit wide in race one. As he was already a lap down this was basically no penalty at all and I can honestly say that in my eight years of car racing I have never raced anyone who has pulled off such a stupid manoeuvre on me and at GP2 level it was shocking, firstly that he did it and secondly that he effectively received no punishment for it. Seething, I went over to talk to him as he parked up after the race, away from the cameras in the support pit lane. After hearing his quite frankly pathetic excuses of 'I knew I was a lap down but I just didn't see you' (He was clearly defending from me and I was actually ahead when we made contact) and being told I was the idiot. I was absolutely furious and uncharacteristically for me, let him know how I felt, in no uncertain terms. When you and a lot of others around you put so much into a race weekend, especially at your home race, when someone takes you out in that manner, in what was in my opinion a deliberate move it can be extremely difficult to control your emotions! Having spoken to a few other drivers I think they feel that he compromised their races as well. I was called to the stewards an hour after the race. Thinking it might be to discuss Canamasas' penalty or to discuss a penalty for Richelmi after he took me out at the start of the race I was both amazed and appalled to hear that it was actually me under investigation after a marshal had reported me for showing some aggression to Canamasas. After explaining to the stewards exactly what had happened, completely honestly from my perspective, I was hit with a €12,000 fine and told I was lucky to have not been given a race ban. It's difficult to accept a fine like this for a small reaction to a disgraceful bit of driving. Either the stewards thought that the incident was a lot worse than it was or they were misguided by the reports they had. Canamasas escaped penalty, Richelmi escaped a penalty and I was hit with a big fine. What also really irritated me was the penalty for Fabio Leimer's incident on Saturday. I actually don't have a problem with the penalty itself although it is strange that I haven't seen one like this before. What annoyed me more was that I was thrown off the podium in Barcelona for an incident which was certainly not worse. If I had had the same penalty as Leimer I would have been 14 points better off albeit, six places further down the starting grid for the Sunday. Overall as you might have gathered I feel very hard done by by the stewards. The penalties at the moment seem hugely inconsistent and disproportionate. I really enjoy racing in GP2, some of the wheel to wheel racing is great to be a part of and I have a lot of respect for nearly all of the other drivers out there. There are a couple though who don't respect anyone else and I think it's a shame for GP2 if they are not dealt with more harshly. Now I am heading over to Nurburgring for the next round. It is good to get going again after the disappointment of Silverstone and hopefully my luck can turn and I can pick up the points I feel I have deserved in the last few rounds. JP Follow Jolyon on Twitter: @JolyonPalmer