Hungarian GP, what chaos with the blue flags!
It is certainly not often seen that a driver battling in the back hinders the fight for the top positions. Certainly not in Formula 1 nor even in traditional European races – for those on American ovals, however, the boundary is much more blurred and a lapped driver is never really obliged to get out of the way – where blue flags have a particularly strict meaning. Yet, this is exactly what happened from the sixth lap of the Hungarian GP in Budapest, marked negatively by numerous misunderstandings between the lead lap drivers and the lapped drivers: the most striking case is the contact between Carlos Sainz and Oscar Piastri, but also Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon admitted, for example, to having held back Isack Hadjar for a few too many corners. So what happened on track at the Hungaroring during the 70 laps of Sunday’s GP?
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Behind the scenes: system malfunction
It was from the sixth lap of the race that, not only on the official F1 live timing but also on the teams’ GPS systems on track, the indications of the cars’ positions between the corners of the Budapest circuit went completely haywire. During the live text commentary on FormulaPassion.it we noticed, for example, how the colored dots corresponding to each different driver moved without any logic from one side to the other of the track map, but the problem was not just a visual annoyance for those following the race with the help of the official championship app. In fact, the GPS system malfunction also caused the normal blue flag indications to fail, causing the notorious misunderstandings between lapped drivers and lead lap drivers that were much talked about at the end of the GP.
What happened during the Hungarian GP
Usually, in fact, all lapped drivers receive the information that they are about to be overtaken by a car at the top of the standings in three different ways: the blue flashing light panels trackside showing the number of the driver who must move aside, the same type of indications on the steering wheel-computer display, and the radio communications from the engineers at the pit wall. Three indications that in some ways were all missing simultaneously from the sixth lap of the GP until the checkered flag: the light panels kept flashing all the time (given the many lapped drivers) but without indicating the number of the driver to whom the blue flag referred, with the steering wheel indications completely gone and the engineers in the pits forced to rely on TV images rather than GPS.
Proof of this is also found in the official FIA documents which show the substantial absence of such messages, unlike what normally happens in other GPs when, from mid-race onwards, dozens and dozens of messages of this kind can be read (these are the ones starting with “waved blue flag“, for this year’s Monaco GP).
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This is why Carlos Sainz is (partly) exonerated
It is also for this reason that, despite videos unfairly showing how Carlos Sainz passed eight blue flashing light panels, the Spaniard is partly exonerated: at one point he was warned by the pits of Piastri’s presence behind him, but the contact happened at a point where the driver’s visibility was limited, which is why the former Ferrari driver received only a five-second penalty and not ten. Sainz is not the only one to have hindered fellow lead lap drivers during Sunday’s Hungarian GP: “We had no indication on the steering wheel – explains Esteban Ocon after the checkered flag – and it’s true that there were electronic panels with blue flags, but without the number indication. I, for example, battled for a few corners with Hadjar because I didn’t know I was lapped.”
Of the same opinion is his teammate Oliver Bearman, who at the end of the race received a five-second penalty for ignoring the blue flags, also with Hadjar: “I’m sorry for the penalty but honestly it was a nightmare. Every lap I saw the panels with blue lights, but they didn’t work properly and it was unclear if they were for me, for the car behind me, for the one in front or for anyone else. There was no malice, I was a lap down and wasn’t trying to do anything wrong, but obviously I’m sorry for anyone whose race was compromised because of me. From lap 6 there were blue flags every lap, it was hard to understand what was true, what was false, what was for me and what wasn’t, because normally your number is on the panels but this time there was only blue.”
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