Williams boss James Vowles has shifted blame for Carlos Sainz’s Hungarian Grand Prix collision with Oscar Piastri away from his driver and onto the team -- as well as Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso.
Sainz was branded an “idiot” by then-race leader Piastri after driving into him while being lapped.
Sainz had been swapping positions back and forth with Alonso in a battle for 17th when the incident took place.
The collision ultimately cost Piastri the lead after his pit stop, emerging less than a second behind teammate Lando Norris.
Piastri later labelled the move “the dumbest thing” he’s ever seen in racing.
However, he gave a deeper explanation of what happened, and noted the driving of Alonso in the other car.
Since the race, onboard video from Sainz’s car has circulated showing him passing multiple flashing blue light boards on the side of the road.
The video also shows him being passed on the inside of turn one and again at turn two by Alonso a few seconds before the Piastri collision.
That meant Alonso had been the car in front of Piastri for a chunk of time in the lead up to the incident which followed.
Vowles says this was just as significant in what ended up happening and said if Alonso had yielded when he was being shown blue flags, the subsequent Sainz-Piastri incident would not have happened.
“Two problems took place,” Vowles said. “That flag system just 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].
“Now if I particularly focus on Carlos, and Fernando, who was the car behind, and Oscar. Fernando had a number of blue flashing lights all the way through and in fact remained in position in front of Oscar. You have to do it in order, so Fernando should have conceded that position earlier.
“What happened is, he didn’t. What happened is he took an opportunity to go inside of Carlos into turn one. So at that stage Carlos then became the car behind and when you do 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 [flashing blue].
“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.”
Vowles said Alonso’s overtake -- plus Williams not giving Sainz a clear read on the situation -- ultimately contributed to what happened next.
“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 [Alonso] and that should have probably conceded before we did.”
The stewards investigated Sainz during the race and found he was “wholly responsible” for the contact between the two cars on lap 39.
However, noting that Sainz had limited visibility of Piastri through Turns 2 and 3, they issued a five-second penalty rather than the standard 10-second penalty for causing a collision.
