– At the Hungarian Grand Prix, lapping caused an unusual amount of commotion. According to the FIA, there were technical problems at the Hungaroring, which meant that automated blue flags could not be used. The consequence: they relied on waved flags and light signals operated manually by the marshals.
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The collision between Carlos Sainz and Oscar Piastri, in particular, exemplifies the problems that arose from this. Although blue flags had been waved for the Williams driver, the four-time Grand Prix winner ignored the instruction and blocked Piastri, who was fighting for the win, in the first sector.
A few laps later, Sainz received a five-second time penalty. But even apart from the small collision, similar scenes repeatedly occurred at the Hungaroring.
F1: Hungarian Grand Prix (Budapest) 2026
“We didn’t get any feedback on the dash,” Esteban Ocon explained after the race. “We only saw the blue flag panels, but without our numbers.”
“For example,” Ocon said, “I was fighting against Isack [Hadjar] at the pit lane exit, even though I was a lap down. But I didn’t know that. Maybe I held him up for three corners.”
Not only Ocon was confused by the signals on the track. Kimi Antonelli recounted in the cooldown room before the podium that he too had believed for laps that he was being shown blue flags by mistake.
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In other words: For whom exactly the blue flags were intended often remained a mystery to the drivers. Drivers like Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas also confirmed the technical problems.
Haas driver Oliver Bearman made similar comments after the race. At times, the Ferrari junior had also held up Hadjar’s Red Bull and emphasized: “Honestly, it was a nightmare out there.”
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“In the infield, you don’t have time to look in your mirrors,” said the Haas driver. “And on every lap, the blue flag panels were flashing. They didn’t work properly in this race. That’s why it was hard to know if [the blue flags] were for you or the car behind you or the car in front of you or whoever.”
“Of course, that wasn’t intentional,” Bearman explained about his brief encounter with Hadjar. “I’m a lap down there and trying not to do anything bad. But of course, I’m sorry if I should have affected someone’s race.”
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Bearman explicitly emphasized that blue flags were visible on every single lap from lap 6 to lap 70. “Normally,” said the Haas driver, “you see your number there. This time, it was just blue.”
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