Oscar Piastri fumes over ‘unacceptable’ clash lapping Carlos Sainz after F1 blue flag system failure

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Oscar Piastri was left fuming with Carlos Sainz for showing an “unacceptable” lack of awareness after a collision while lapping the Williams driver cost him the chance to fight for victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Piastri had been in contention for victory at the Hungaroring on Sunday, leading the opening stint of the race from McLaren teammate Lando Norris.

But Piastri’s hopes of a first win of the year were all but ended after his second pit stop when he made contact with Sainz at Turn 2 while trying to lap the Williams driver, who was battling with Fernando Alonso at the time for 16th place.

Sainz later received a five-second time penalty from the stewards for causing a collision.

Under F1’s regulations, drivers who are being lapped are required to allow those on the lead lap to pass them to ensure they do not have a negative impact on their races.

It emerged after the race that there was an issue with the automated blue flags system that notifies cars they are about to be lapped with blue flashing lights both on the panels at the side of the track and on their steering wheels.

Race control instead relied on marshals waving flags and pressing the button for the light panels to notify the drivers.

After the collision, which caused Piastri to lose total control of his car momentarily and lose a couple of seconds, Norris was able to emerge from the pits just ahead of the Australian. While Norris pulled away and went on to win the race, Piastri ultimately retired with 15 laps to go due to a gearbox failure.

Piastri told Sainz to “get out of the f—ing way you idiot” over the radio following the clash, and asked if he was “f—ing stupid or what.” He remained unimpressed with the Spaniard when speaking to reporters in the media pen after the race.

“I knew there were blue flags, but there were blue flags on all the marshal signals, I was right behind him for a sector,” Piastri explained.

“I couldn’t believe what happened. Getting crashed into by a lapped car is never one of the things you expect that can go wrong in your race, and today it was, so I don’t really care if he didn’t see me.

“The fact that he didn’t and no one told him, or there was a lack of complete awareness, is unacceptable.”

Sainz explained to reporters that the blue flag system issue meant he did not have the usual blue lights on his dashboard that would have typically helped while he focused on the battle with Alonso.

“I had no idea I was about to get lapped, and on top of that, I was in a big fight with Fernando trying to undercut him into the corner,” Sainz said.

“I wouldn’t have expected Oscar to be there, and even if he was there or I would have expected he was on my dead spot on the angle, so it was impossible honestly from my side to avoid it.

“Probably a bit better communication would have helped, but at the same time (it was) a racing thing.”

Sainz added that while he felt sorry for Piastri, he thought he had “a pretty good excuse for what happened” in the incident.

“I don’t know if he could also have been a bit more careful, given that he’s the one fighting for podiums and he positioned himself a bit more cautiously, because of all the issues we were all having with the blue flags.”

Piastri took a dim view on Sainz’s defence of his involvement in the move, saying the Williams driver was fighting Alonso “like it was (for) the world championship.”

“He’s quite critical of others, and others have given him some stick before for being frustrating on-track,” Piastri said of Sainz.

“When you go and do something like that, maybe you should look in the mirror a bit.”

After Norris came out of the pits in the net lead, Piastri appeared to question McLaren’s decision to run slightly different strategies between its drivers.

But he explained that his frustration on the radio was more to do with Sainz rather than the timing of his pit stop.

“We wanted to cover off (Lewis) Hamilton, which was perfectly normal,” said Piastri. “Without getting crashed into, I would have been ahead of Lando still. So from that side of things I was fine.

“In the moment I was incredibly annoyed — in fact annoyed is not the word I would use, there’s a multitude that I would — with Carlos. Then obviously when Lando came out ahead, I knew I had no pace to go and attack him.

“I knew my chances of winning the race were done from there. So in the moment, yeah, I was pissed off that I’d lost the lead of the race, but that wasn’t the fault of the team, it was Carlos’ fault.”