Carlos Sainz has given his take on the contact made with Oscar Piastri while being lapped during the Hungarian Grand Prix, which earned him a five-second penalty.
Piastri escaped without damage, but he lost precious seconds and momentum, compromising his battle with team mate Lando Norris. He made his frustration clear with some fairly colourful language on team radio.
At the time, Sainz was chasing his friend and countryman Fernando Alonso as they scrapped over 14th position.
It was when the Williams driver cut back across the track that he clipped the front of Piastri’s McLaren. As the FIA stewards noted, the Australian was in Sainz’s blind spot at that point.
The stewards also noted that there had been communication from the Williams pit wall about the approach of Piastri.
However, Sainz was fully focused on the Aston Martin he was racing, and his life was made more difficult by a problem with the system that shows blue lights to drivers on their steering wheels.
Due to a communication issue with the GPS data that became apparent in the early laps – and which gave some drivers rogue warnings before any real lapping was actually going on – the blue light system had to be disabled.
The lights provide additional information, and drivers are obliged to obey physical waved flags and the blue panels around the track – although, with the system disabled, the latter were not displaying the relevant car numbers.
Nevertheless, the steering wheel lights are a useful and important tool, as Sainz noted.
“We didn’t have blue lights on the steering, which normally, when we are in fights like that one where we are fighting for position, helps us to understand whether we’re getting lapped or not,” he said.
“So at this stage, 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, and I wouldn’t have expected Oscar to be there.
“And even if he was there, or I would have expected him, he was in my dead spot on the angle. So it was impossible, honestly, from my side to avoid it. So yeah, probably a bit better communication would have helped, but at the same time, a racing thing that sometimes happens.”
Sainz accepted the penalty, while acknowledging that the blue light issue had not helped.
“To be honest, I’m really sorry for Oscar,” he said. “But 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 position himself a bit more cautiously, with all the issues we were all having with the blue flags.
“But yeah, it’s a shame. I took the five seconds. I’m okay with it. I don’t care when I’m fighting for P18. But it’s what it is.”
He added: “It’s a racing incident. He probably understands what happened. He didn’t retire due to me or my fault, so 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 acknowledged that drivers have to obey blue flags and said the best way to avoid being caught out was to have a faster car.
“There are very clear rules around it,” he said. “If we were not so slow, there wouldn’t be so many blue flags. So we know what the solution is. Everyone needs to catch up on the leaders, because last year there were almost no blue flags, because the whole field was within half a second, and this year we were getting lapped twice.”
“I know something was wrong in the system, and today was a very difficult day to control the blue flag. But for sure, we need to be faster to not get lapped. I never got lapped twice in my life, so it’s quite bad.”
After a race that saw him pit three times – with the penalty taken at the second stop – Sainz eventually finished a lowly 18th.
“I had a really good race up until that contact with Oscar, managing to keep up with the Haas, managing to actually undercut one Haas,” he said. “And we were racing Haas when yesterday they were half a second quicker. Honestly, at one point I was like, we are actually having a really good day.
“And unfortunately, that contact with Oscar, then the five-second penalty, and then an unnecessary pit stop at the end when we were ahead of Bearman and Alex [Albon] – just to slot in behind them and finish P18, which is a bit unnecessary. I need to understand why we made that call, because it’s a bit strange.”
