Top News

Oscar Piastri had been hoping to take on his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris for victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix even without the latest upgrades, but a collision with Carlos Sainz, who was a lap down, wrecked his chances of securing a podium.

Piastri eventually retired with a gearbox failure 20 laps after the incident with Sainz, marking his first DNF of the season after the two DNS results he suffered at the start of the year.

The clash was one that should have been prevented by Formula 1’s blue-flag system, which is meant to warn backmarker drivers that a car on the lead lap is coming through. Although blue flags were being shown around the circuit, the in-car systems were malfunctioning throughout the grand prix, which contributed to Sainz’s error.

Piastri came in from the lead while his team-mate Lando Norris was making his case over the radio to be given track position through strategy, arguing that he had the quicker car and the new upgrades. Norris told the team he could run faster if he was not stuck in Piastri’s dirty air.

Piastri made his pit stop first on lap 34, while Norris stayed out in front so he could have fresher tyres later in the final stint, set to show he could keep his team-mate behind.

When Piastri rejoined from the pit lane, he was running fifth, with Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc and Kimi Antonelli all still needing to stop ahead of him, and he was 4 seconds clear of Lewis Hamilton, who had pitted on the same lap. Unfortunately for Piastri, he was released into heavy lapped traffic. Three laps later, now in fourth behind Antonelli, he arrived at the fight for 16th place between Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz.

Piastri was using up his tyres trying to force his way through traffic while Norris continued to lead, and the gap between the two was coming down as Norris headed the race on completely fresh tyres.

The battle between Alonso and Sainz did not ease as Piastri caught them. When Sainz moved to try and overtake Alonso on the run into Turn 2, Piastri was further around the outside attempting to clear both cars and maintain the buffer he needed to his team-mate. Sainz did not see Piastri and was not responding to the marshals’ blue flags, which led to contact between the two.

Sainz was given a penalty for avoidable contact, but it was cut to 5 seconds instead of the usual 10 seconds because Piastri was in the driver’s blind spot at the moment of contact.

“The Driver of Car 55 was wholly responsible for the collision with Car 81,” the stewards’ decision stated. “While the standard penalty for causing a collision is a 10-second time penalty, the Stewards identified a mitigating factor. At the point of the incident, the positioning of Car 55 relative to the circuit and theater cars meant that Car 81 was not visible to the driver of Car 55 prior to the attempted overtake. Although the driver had been informed that Car 81 was approaching, the Stewards accepted that the limited visibility reduced the degree of culpability.”

Norris emerged ahead of Piastri after the second round of stops, and with that, Piastri’s opportunity to fight for the win disappeared.

Speaking in the post-race media scrum, Sainz said he was sorry for failing to see Piastri or the blue flags, and admitted the incident could have been avoided with better communication between him and his pit wall.

“The incident with Piastri could have been avoided with a bit better communication and a bit of bad luck with the dead angle in my mirror,” Sainz said. “I just didn’t know he was there, so I had no clue he was lapping us and he was in my dead spot in the mirror.”

At the same time, Sainz said he felt Piastri, as a driver fighting for wins and podiums, could also have been more cautious, a remark that did not go down well.

“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 we were all having with the blue flags.”

Piastri made it clear during his own post-race media session that he did not consider Sainz’s explanation acceptable, describing it as “one of the dumbest things [he’s] seen on the race track.”

“Yeah, I knew there were blue flags issues, but there were blue flags on all the marshal signals. I was right behind him for a sector,” Piastri said in the post-race media scrum.

“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.

“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. He was fighting with 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.”