David Coulthard was critical of the way the Formula 1 grid dealt with the blue flag issues throughout the Hungarian Grand Prix.
There was a system failure during the race that stopped the blue flag signal from showing up on lapped cars’ dashboards.
During the race, Oscar Piastri was attempting to pass the lapped cars of Carlos Sainz and Fernando Alonso. Sainz did not move out of the way for the Australian and instead made contact with the race leader, which he believed lost him the victory.
Equally later in the race, Max Verstappen was stuck behind the two Racing Bulls drivers as they fought for position, ignoring the frontrunner behind them. Verstappen was enraged by the duo and called them ‘morons’ on the radio.
Coulthard puts blame on F1 teams
Former F1 driver Coulthard was irate about the situation on the Up to Speed podcast.
He said: “It was like the first day of school! And I’m talking kindergarten in the way that drivers were reacting to blue flags.
“Now, some will say the timing streams had an issue, but there is such a thing as just being spatially aware and your engineers actually looking over the pit wall.”
Piastri shared the same disbelief, ignoring Sainz’s defence that he thought the Australian would understand because he hadn’t seen the blue flags and the contact came from ‘just racing’.
The McLaren driver was visibly frustrated. He urged that there were still blue flags being waved by marshals and slammed the Williams driver’s lack of awareness as ‘unacceptable ‘.
Coulthard’s argument was that it was the responsibility of the teams to communicate with the drivers, making use of being on the pit wall.
“I made this comment in commentary: very few of the teams now actually have a gap on their what is affectionately known as the prats perch, the engineering wall where the engineers and the team principal normally sit,” he said.
“In the case of Toto [Wolff], of course, he’s sitting back in the garage, but they look, and they did look over the pit wall back in the day, and you have a certain awareness of where the other cars are.”
Coulthard argued that there would be more lenience in qualifying but in the race, having two separate incidents like this simply ‘wasn’t good enough’.
“So, you can’t ever factor in qualifying on somebody coming out of the pit lane. But in a grand prix, when people are circulating at pace, you can usually tell.
“Well, not usually – you absolutely can tell! It just wasn’t good enough.”
The results of the incident
After the race, Sainz received a five-second penalty for the incident. Many have deemed that the penalty was not harsh enough. It is the same penalty that Ollie Bearman received for also ignoring blue flags.
Toto Wolff joined in the criticism, calling the pit wall ‘teletubby’ engineers in his rant after the race.
The entire purpose of the blue flag system is to allow the front runners to pass the back markers without having to slow down or lose time. This system malfunctioning causes a level of danger to the drivers who are expecting cars to move out of their way.
However, there should be systems in place to support the teams and drivers when the system falters. That responsibility lies with the engineers.
READ MORE: Oscar Piastri slams ‘unacceptable’ Carlos Sainz move after F1 Hungary DNF
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