Piastri fumes at Sainz but tapers down McLaren criticism

Oscar Piastri says Carlos Sainz should “look in the mirror a bit” after branding their collision during the Hungarian Grand Prix as “unacceptable.”

Sainz was fighting with Fernando Alonso around the halfway stage of the race when Piastri – the net race leader at the time – came through to lap him, but the Williams driver moved back to the racing line at Turn 3 and made contact with Piastri’s car. The incident cost Piastri enough time that teammate Lando Norris then made a pit stop and emerged ahead, with the Australian dismissing blue flag system issues as an excuse.

“I knew there was blue flags, but there was blue flags on all the marshal signals, I was right behind him for a sector, and 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 or no one told him or there was a lack of complete awareness is unacceptable.

“I mean, he was fighting Fernando for last place like it was the world championship, and 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, and when you go and do something like that, I think maybe you should look in the mirror a bit.”

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At the time, Piastri – who would later retire with a gearbox issue – criticized McLaren for taking advantage of his incident with Norris’ stop, but he says he understands the team could not jeopardize the other car’s race result.

“It was more the fact that I got crashed into by a lapped car. I think the timing of my stop was fine, we wanted to cover off [Lewis] Hamilton, which was perfectly normal. Without getting crashed into I would have been ahead of Lando still, so from that side of things I was fine.

“In the moment I was incredibly annoyed – in fact annoyed is not the word I would use, but there was a multitude that I would – with Carlos, and then 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.

“I was upset that I lost the lead of the race through no fault of my own, and 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. I know that Lando's got his own race to try and win and there's other people, so they can't just not box Lando because of something out of his control and out of my control. So from that side of things it's fine; I was just very, very pissed off in the moment about what happened.”