Williams puts partial blame on Fernando Alonso for Carlos Sainz and Oscar Piastri F1 clash

The Williams Formula 1 team has placed some of the blame for Carlos Sainz’s clash with Oscar Piastri during the Hungarian Grand Prix on Fernando Alonso. 

Race leader Piastri was attempting to lap Sainz on lap 38 when the Williams driver, who was in his own battle for 17th place with Alonso, drifted across Piastri and made contact with the McLaren coming out of Turn 2. 

Sainz insisted the clash was “impossible to avoid” but was handed a five-second time penalty for the incident which cost Piastri - who raged at the Spaniard’s “unacceptable” driving - the lead before he later retired with a gearbox failure. 

A blue-flag malfunction which meant race control had to revert to ‘old-school’ marshalling at the Hungaroring did not help matters. 

“We need to make sure that as FIA systems do fail – and they will fail from time to time – we have a slightly better mechanism in place,” Williams team principal James Vowles said. 

“When a leader is approaching you, you get a warning, effectively. We translate it into an audio warning, but it’s also a warning that goes to the driver. So if they’re 1.6 seconds behind, for example, and closing in, we just make sure that we’re given a notification of that and we can start planning through what we’re going to do around the lap.

“It needs good GPS data for doing it. The second part of the system is that when that leader is 1.2 seconds behind, that’s a locked-in blue flag condition and we know that we have a number of marshalling posts to get out of the way of the leaders.

“That flag system simply wasn’t working. In fact, at one point we were just operating with marshals doing their best, but waving blue flags, and it’s a very difficult thing for marshals to do, they don’t know when the cars are coming by and trigger that. 

"What then was resolved was trying to use the flashing blue lights, but without indicating which driver it is [intended for].”

Vowles felt the situation could have been avoided altogether had Alonso conceded position to Piastri earlier, though he acknowledged Williams could have also done a better job on its side. 

“Fernando had a number of blue flashing lights all the way through and in fact remained in position in front of Oscar,” Vowles said. 

“You have to do it in order, so Fernando should have conceded that position earlier. What happened is, he didn’t but took an opportunity to go up the inside of Carlos into turn one. 

“So at that stage Carlos then became the car behind and when you do you have a number of marshal posts to therefore give up position. However on the run down to turn two Carlos was back ahead now so the car behind is Fernando again with the light boards.

“Again, into the next corner, Fernando went to the inside of Carlos, which put Carlos the car behind. You’ll see that on the video, as Carlos came back on to rejoin, that’s when Oscar went on the inside.

“So what complicated it is fundamentally without the automatic system, cars were staying in place for perhaps longer than they should have done. Second to that, you have to know which one is exactly the car behind at the right moment.

“Now what we did do is communicate to Carlos into turn one that Oscar was coming. What we should have done, because ultimately we’re still racing for a non-point scoring position, is indicate to Carlos that that was happening at the point where he was alongside Fernando on the run down to turn two. So that’s what I mean by it’s our culpability.

“But it wasn’t an attempt to go and block Oscar or otherwise. Actually in this circumstance there was another car that was the car behind and that should have probably conceded before we did."