A platoon of trucks driving at the same, mutually agreed speed while keeping a minimum inter-vehicle distance will reduce fuel consumption, enhance transport efficiency as well as improve the safety of other adjacent road users. The European profile of IEEE 802.11p for inter-vehicle communications uses a single 10 MHz control channel dedicated to safety-critical data, shared by periodic status updates, and event-triggered warnings. Coupled with the random access delay inherent to the 802.11p medium access method, the strict timing and reliability requirements of platoon applications are not easily met. To this end, we evaluate the effect of IEEE 802.11p-compliant send rate adaptations and message type prioritizations and the choice of warning dissemination strategy in a platooning scenario. Simulation studies of a platoon of 10-20 vehicles in a busy highway scenario show that a context-aware choice of send rate, priority class and dissemination strategy not only reduces the hazard warning dissemination delay but also has a significant effect on the throughput of periodic beacons.