Alonso contributed to collision between Sainz and Piastri, says Vowles – RaceFans

Williams team principal James Vowles has explained the sequence of events which led to Carlos Sainz Jnr’s collision with Oscar Piastri, which cost the McLaren driver the lead of the race.

The pair tangled at turn two as Piastri tried to overtake the Williams. The loss of time allowed Piastri’s team mate Lando Norris to move ahead of his team mate through his second pit stop, which he made shortly afterwards.

Vowles admitted the team should have handled the situation better despite the complication of the FIA’s blue flag system not working correctly. However he also pointed out Fernando Alonso contributed to the incident by failing to let Piastri to lap him when he should have done.

Instead of letting the effective race leader lap him, Alonso overtook Sainz, triggering a battle for position which further delayed Piastri.

Vowles said the situation was complicated by the failure of the FIA’s automatic blue light signalling system, which meant drivers were unsure which drivers they should allow to overtake them and when to do it.

“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,” he said in a video released by the team.

“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.

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“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.”

However during Sunday’s race “that flag system simply wasn’t working,” Vowles explained. “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).”

When Piastri initially caught the two lapped drivers, Alonso was behind Sainz and therefore first in line to let him past. “Fernando had a number of blue flashing lights all the way through and in fact remained in position in front of Oscar,” said Vowles. “You have to do it in order, so Fernando should have conceded that position earlier. What happened is, he didn’t.”

Instead Alonso passed Sainz at turn one, leading Piastri to try to lap the Williams driver at the exit of turn two.

“We took an opportunity to go up the inside of Carlos into turn one,” said Vowles. “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.”

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The stewards gave Sainz a five-second time penalty for the collision. They did not investigate Alonso’s reaction to blue flags or take into account the problem with the signalling system, but did consider Sainz’s poor visibility of Piastri’s car as a mitigating factor.

“What complicated it is fundamentally without the automatic system, cars were staying in place for perhaps longer than they should have done,” Vowles continued. “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.”

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