Oscar Piastri Says Hungarian GP Collision With Carlos Sainz Was Unacceptable as Wolff Slams Rival Engineers

• Oscar Piastri called it “unacceptable” that Carlos Sainz collided with him mid-race after a blue flag system failure left backmarkers without a dashboard warning at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
• Mercedes boss Toto Wolff branded rival pit wall staff “Teletubbies engineers” for failing to warn their drivers that Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Antonelli were closing in from behind.
• McLaren team principal Andrea Stella defended the strategy calls that saw Piastri lose the lead to team-mate Lando Norris before a gearbox failure ended his race.

Oscar Piastri’s Hungarian Grand Prix unraveled through no fault of his own, and by the time it was over he had run out of patience with both a rival driver and a broken piece of race-control technology.

Piastri started third but overtook Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari and pole-sitter Lando Norris in the opening corners to take the lead at the end of lap one. He held it for much of the afternoon before a collision with lapped Williams driver Carlos Sainz, a pit call that swung the lead to team-mate Norris, and an eventual gearbox failure combined to end his afternoon early while running second.

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A broken blue flag system and an “unacceptable” collision

In the second half of the race, leaders found it difficult to get past lapped traffic cleanly, and it later emerged there had been a fault with the blue flag system. Rather than the usual dashboard signal telling a driver they were about to be lapped, physical blue-waved flags and trackside panels were the only warning available.

That failure led directly to the defining moment of Piastri’s race. At Turn 2, Sainz, unaware Piastri was directly behind him and fighting Fernando Alonso for position, swung back onto the racing line and made contact with the McLaren.

“I was right behind him [Sainz] for a sector. I couldn’t believe what happened,” Piastri said. “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 was handed a five-second time penalty for the collision but pointed to the systems failure as an explanation. “I wouldn’t have expected Oscar to be there, and even if he was there I would have expected he was on my dead spot on the angle, so it was impossible honestly from my side to avoid it,” he said. “Probably a bit better communication would have helped, but at the same time it was a racing thing.” Sainz added that he had been fighting Alonso for position at the time, calling the systems fault a “pretty good excuse,” and suggested Piastri could have been more cautious given he was fighting for the win.

Piastri did not accept that account. “He’s quite critical of others, and others have given him some stick before for being frustrating on-track,” he said. “When you go and do something like that, maybe you should look in the mirror a bit.”

Wolff brands rival engineers “Teletubbies”

Piastri and McLaren were not the only ones affected. The same breakdown in communication disrupted the podium fight between Antonelli and Hamilton as they chased down race leader Max Verstappen, prompting a pointed response from Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff.

“The marshalling system not functioning and cars at the back defending in the Lewis and Kimi fight. It’s disgraceful from some of the Teletubbies engineers that sit on the pit walls of these teams not telling their drivers what’s happening behind,” Wolff told Sky Sports F1.

Stella took a more measured tone but agreed something had gone wrong beyond ordinary racing. “We know Carlos. He’s such a fair driver, correct. So, if this is happening it means something wasn’t working correctly,” Stella said. “I understand that the blue panels maybe were the problem. After that we told our drivers to be just super, super cautious because, for some reason, the backmarkers seemed to be struggling more than normal.”

Losing the lead to Norris

Piastri’s collision with Sainz arrived at almost the same moment as McLaren’s second round of pit stops, a coincidence that briefly put him at odds with his own team. He asked the pit wall not to bring Norris in immediately afterward, hoping to preserve the lead he felt he had lost through no fault of his own.

“I was crashed into by Carlos and, in the moment, I was hoping maybe they would not pit Lando because of that incident to at least give me the chance to stay in the lead but I think that’s not very reasonable,” Piastri said afterward. “I was just more very upset in the moment about what had happened. I think the timing of my pit stop was fine, we wanted to beat Lewis and that’s what we needed to do.”

Stella explained that the call had nothing to do with favoring one driver over the other, and everything to do with the threat of Hamilton’s Ferrari undercutting both McLarens. “If you look at the race trace, you will see that when Hamilton pits, he is in condition to undercut the two McLarens, so we needed to respond,” Stella said. “So, it was either Oscar or Lando. Oscar was in the lead, and we thought that he was the right car to stop for that. And then for Lando, this opened up a different strategy. It’s not like you are deviating because you are thinking about Oscar and Lando. You are deviating because we needed to avoid that the Ferrari could take the lead of the race.”

Norris made the most of the opening that followed, running longer on his tires and overcutting his team-mate for the lead he would not relinquish. “I think then what follows has to do with the pace difference because Lando on used tyres was not much slower than the cars on new tyres, and it’s there that he gained the victory today,” Stella said. “So, I think it’s a victory on pace, and Lando had the opportunity to use it, but not because the team kind of wanted to create it. The team needed to cover Hamilton.”

By the time Piastri’s gearbox failed and forced his retirement, he had already made peace with the pit wall’s decision, if not with Sainz. “Without getting crashed into, I would have been ahead of Lando still. So from that side of things I was fine,” he said. “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 p***** off that I’d lost the lead of the race, but that wasn’t the fault of the team, it was Carlos’ fault.”

Piastri dropped to seventh in the drivers’ standings after his first retirement of the season, his championship hopes dented by a race that offered him almost nothing he could control. Formula 1 returns for the Dutch Grand Prix on August 21-23.

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Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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