'Dumb' driving or a 'good excuse'? Piastri's rage at Sainz

A malfunctioning blue flag system at Formula 1's Hungarian Grand Prix gave Carlos Sainz what he felt was a "good excuse" for his clash with Oscar Piastri - but Piastri felt Sainz's driving was "unacceptable" and hypocritical.

And Piastri wasn’t the only member of a frontrunning team livid with not the system failure but backmarkers’ handling of it - with Mercedes boss Toto Wolff comparing midfield teams’ pitwall staff to “Teletubbies engineers that sit on the pitwalls of these teams, not telling the drivers what's happening behind” in a Sky interview.

The automatic blue flag system failed around nine laps into the 70-lap race, leading to some erroneous automatic blue flag signals being sent, even though no driver was actually being lapped.

The Race understands that when this technical malfunction was spotted, the automatic system was quickly paused so that marshals (at their posts) and drivers (on their steering wheels) wouldn't get incorrect blue flag prompts. 

It meant things were done manually with marshals blue-flagging the drivers, who needed to observe the flags displayed, instead of also being notified on their steering wheel. That also put more onus on teams to notify their drivers of blue flags. 

This was part of Sainz's logic for why he made contact with Piastri while being lapped - something that incited fury from Piastri, who had been battling his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris for the win and felt the time lost in the incident with Sainz was crucial to Norris jumping him in the second pitstop sequence.

"We didn't have blue lights on the steering [wheel] which normally, when we are in fights like that one where we are fighting for position, it helps us to understand whether we're getting lapped or not," Sainz explained.

"So at this stage, I had no idea I was about to get lapped. On top of that, I was in a big fight with Fernando [Alonso] trying to undercut him into the corner and I wouldn't have expected Oscar to be there. 

"And even if he was there, or I would have expected [him to be there], he was in my dead spot on the angle. It was impossible, honestly, from my side to avoid it. 

"Probably a bit better communication would have helped. But at the same time, sometimes it happens." 

Sainz said there are "very clear" blue flag rules, though also used it as a chance to criticise his Williams car's lack of pace, saying "if we were not so slow, there wouldn't be so many blue flags. So we know what the solution is".  

The stewards handed Sainz a five-second time penalty, which was downgraded from a 10-second time penalty because of what the officials felt were mitigating circumstances of "the limited visibility" of blue flags, which "reduced the degree of culpability".

Asked by The Race if the system problem should have been factored in, Sainz said: "To be honest, I'm really sorry for Oscar but this time I think I have a pretty good excuse for what happened.

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

"It's a shame. I took the five seconds. I'm OK with it. I don't care when I'm fighting for P18. But yeah, it's what it is." 

Asked if he'd spoken to Piastri yet, Sainz said: "No, no, I don't need this. It's a racing incident, he probably understands what happened just by knowing what happened, he didn't retire due to me or my fault.

"It was just a contact and I'm glad it didn't disturb his race too much. But yeah, it's tough when we're all having these issues." 

Sainz should 'look in the mirror' 

Sainz's hopes of Piastri being understanding might fall flat based on the McLaren driver's post-race comments. 

"I knew there were blue flags, but there were blue flags on all the marshal signals. I was right behind him for a sector. I couldn't believe what happened," said Piastri, who later retired from second with a reported gearbox failure.

"Getting crashed into by a lapped car is never one of the things you expect that can go wrong in your race. Today, it was. 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."

When it was put to him that Sainz was focused on Alonso, he replied: "He was fighting Fernando for last place like it was the world championship.

"It cost me the lead of the race. He's quite critical of others, and others have given him some stick before for being frustrating on track. 

"When you go and do something like that, I think maybe you should look in the mirror a bit." 

When ViaPlay asked him about the blue flag malfunction, Piastri replied: "For me that's no excuse at all, that's got to be one of the dumbest things I've seen in a race track. I don't really care what excuse he gave." 

'Teletubby engineers' at fault?

Wolff was critical of the teams of the lapped drivers who got in the way of Kimi Antonelli and Lewis Hamilton's fight for third place late in the race.

"The marshalling system not functioning and cars in the back defending on Lewis and Kimi's fight is just disgraceful from some of the Teletubbies engineers that sit on the pitwalls of these teams, not telling the drivers what's happening behind," Wolff told DAZN Espana. 

Ollie Bearman picked up a five-second time penalty for ignoring blue flags while being lapped by Isack Hadjar's Red Bull.

"I feel bad about the blue flag penalty with Hadjar, because honestly it was a bit of a nightmare," Bearman said. 

"You go through basically the infield, you don't have time to check in the mirrors. And basically every lap I did, I had blue flag screens coming up. 

"This race, they weren't working properly, so it was tough to know if it was you or the car behind or the car ahead or whatever getting the blue flag. 

"Obviously it wasn't malicious; I'm a lap down, I'm not trying to do anything bad, but obviously I feel bad for anyone's race that I may have compromised." 

He added: "At the start of the race I was getting blue flags after six laps, and I thought, wow, that's strange. 

"We're not that slow to be lapped in six laps. So like I said, from lap six, basically until lap 70, there were some blue flags every single lap. "It was really tough to know what was real, what was fake, what was for me, what wasn't, because normally you have your number, this time it was just a blue.

"I had to really rely on the team to help me through those blue flags."