Sainz offers ‘pretty good excuse’ for Oscar Piastri Hungary collision

Carlos Sainz said he felt sorry for Oscar Piastri after their mid-race contact, but believes he had a “pretty good excuse” in believing there was “something wrong in the system” regarding when blue flags were shown.

Piastri was furious after he and Sainz made contact out of Turn 2 in Hungary, with the Williams driver handed a five-second penalty for causing a collision with the then-race leader.

Carlos Sainz explains Oscar Piastri Hungary collision

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The McLaren driver believes the incident with Sainz cost him the lead of the race at the Hungaroring, with time lost in traffic, and the pace of Lando Norris at the front, seeing the Briton overcut his teammate in the pit lane for the net race lead.

Sainz found himself in a battle with Fernando Alonso at the time Piastri approached, and as the Australian took to the inside on the exit of Turn 2 that would be the outside of Turn 3, contact was made and he dipped a wheel onto the grass.

His McLaren engineer, Tom Stallard – who formerly worked with Sainz when he drove for the Woking-based squad – attributed Piastri losing the lead to Sainz not moving aside under blue flag conditions, though Piastri would later retire with a gearbox issue.

Sainz, though, pleaded his case by believing there was an issue with the blue flag system in place on track, and that he did not expect the Australian to have approached him to lap at that point of the circuit.

At the time, he felt the McLaren driver was in his blind spot in the mirrors, which was confirmed by the stewards in a “mitigating circumstance” reducing his penalty, and communication to move aside had not come his way – with marshals waving flags and calls from race engineers providing an indicator of faster cars instead.

“To be honest, I’m really sorry for Oscar, but this time I think I have a pretty good excuse to what happened,” the Williams driver told PlanetF1.com and others after the race.

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

Asked if he had spoken with Piastri in the aftermath on the incident, Sainz added: “No, I don’t need this. It’s a racing incident, and he probably understands what happened just by knowing 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 it’s tough when we’re all having these issues.

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

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

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Sainz and Williams teammate Alex Albon both ended the race two laps behind the lead car of Norris, with both drivers needing to move out of the way of faster cars.

He doubled down on believing there was an issue with the system prompting blue flags to be shown on track, though the simple solution from Williams’ perspective would be to not put themselves in a position where moving away from the racing line is necessary.

“I know something was wrong in the system, and today was a very difficult day to control the blue flag,” Sainz said.

“But for sure, we need to be faster to not get lapped. Never got lapped twice in my life, so it’s quite bad.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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