Oscar Piastri was vocal about his frustrations with Carlos Sainz after the two collided as he tried to lap the Williams driver in the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Piastri came up behind Sainz, who was fighting with Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin, during a crucial point in his race against McLaen teammate Lando Norris. The Australian driver was leading the pack at the time, while the backmarkers fought for the final positions on the field.
As Piastri moved to get ahead of Sainz, he moved to the outside, and Sainz pulled out around to make a move on Alonso, he made contact with the race leader, which damaged the McLaren and ruined his chances of the win.
Not long after the contact, Piastri retired with a gearbox issue, causing him to lose all gears, and left him going into the summer break on a sour note.
Frustration for Piastri
Piastri was frustrated after the race, telling media that the frustration heard over the radio wasn’t due to strategy but rather the incident.
“It was more the fact that I got crashed into by a lapped car.” He explained, “I think the timing of my stuff 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. At the moment I was incredibly annoyed. In fact, annoyed is not the word I would use, but there are a multitude of words that I would. With Carlos and then obviously when Lando came in ahead. I knew I had no pace to go and attack him.
“So I knew my chance of winning the race was done from there. 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.”
Piastri was asked to elaborate on the incident, and if he knew that Sainz had seen him in the mirrors.
The Australian urged that if he’d seen the blue flags, Sainz should’ve been looking in his mirrors. “I knew there were blue flags, but there were blue flags on all the marshal signals. I was right behind him for a sector.” He said.
Oscar Piastri puts responsibility on Sainz
Piastri admitted the move was near unbelievable and said he ‘didn’t care’ if Sainz saw him or not. The Spaniard should’ve been more aware. He deemed the entire incident ‘unacceptable’.
“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. Today, of course, 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.
Carlos said in the media pen that he thought Piastri would understand that it was just an incident within the race as he was focused on Fernando. However, Piastri disagreed.
“It’s a pretty clear system.” He argued, “He was fighting Fernando for last place like it was the world championship. He’s quite critical of others. Others have given him some stink 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.”
Piastri went from a potential win to suffering a DNF in just a couple of laps. The Australian has faced a much different season than he expected. However, he has the positive of McLaren’s upgrades resulting in Lando Norris’ victory. He’ll be hoping he’ll feel the impact of the improvements in Zandvoort.
READ MORE: Lando Norris ends Mercedes-Ferrari hegemony by winning F1 Hungarian GP
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