Piastri slams "unacceptable" Sainz blue-flag incident, accepts McLaren strategy in Hungarian GP

McLaren driver Oscar Piastri was hugely frustrated by being hit by a lapped Carlos Sainz in Formula 1's Hungarian Grand Prix, but saw no bones in McLaren's strategy.

Piastri pitted from the lead for his second stop and was put into lapped traffic, behind Williams driver Sainz and Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso scrapping over a position out of the points.

As Sainz cut back to the racing line in Turn 2, he veered into Piastri's McLaren, unaware of the Australian's position on track. Piastri avoided damage but still lost a significant chunk of time, which ended up costing him the lead to team-mate Lando Norris.

While there had been intermittent GPS issues that interfered with the blue flags signals being displayed on the steering wheel, Sainz and Alonso were still shown blue flags by the marshal-operated light panels.

Piastri tore into Sainz after the race, deeming it "unacceptable" for the Spaniard not to be observing the blue flag regardless of the system glitch.

"Yeah, I knew there were blue flag [issues], but there were blue flags on all the marshal signals," Piastri said.

"I was right behind him. 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. 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.

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"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. 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."

On top of not getting blue flags on his dash, Sainz explained Piastri was in his blind spot, so he wasn't expecting the McLaren to be where it was.

"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, it helps us to understand whether we're getting lapped or not," he explained.

"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.

"Even I had expected [him], he was in my dead angle, so it was impossible, honestly, from my side to avoid it. Probably a bit better communication would have helped but at the same time a racing thing that sometimes happens."

Piastri also redirected his frustration at his own team at the time, sarcastically thanking them for putting him in that position in the first place.

But having cooled down somewhat, Piastri acknowledged having to cover off Lewis Hamilton's pitstop was the right decision, and given Piastri was handed pitstop priority over Norris, he would have easily kept his lead if it hadn't been for a rare interference from lapped traffic.

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"I think the timing of my stop was fine," he acknowledged. "We wanted to cover off Hamilton, which was perfectly normal. Without getting crashed into, I would have been ahead of Lando still.

"Obviously, when Lando came out ahead, I knew I had no pace to go and attack him, so I knew my chances of winning the race were done from there. So, in the moment, I was pissed off that I'd lost the lead of the race. But that wasn't the fault of the team. It was Carlos' fault."

At the time, Piastri felt McLaren could have delayed Norris' stop too, but afterwards he admitted that wouldn't have been a logical thing to do.

"I felt maybe the team could have not pitted Lando if it was a two-car race, but I know it's not a two-car race," Piastri added. "I know that Lando's got his own race to try and win and there's other people.

"They can't just not box Lando because of something out of his control and out of my control. From that side of things, it's fine. I was just very, very pissed off in the moment about what happened."

While Norris went on to win the grand prix, McLaren's first of 2026, Piastri ended up retiring due to a gearbox failure, costing him a chance at second.