Oscar Piastri places blame for Hungaroring horror on Carlos Sainz not McLaren.
The Australian, following a superb start, which saw him capitalise on a mistake by his teammate in Turn 2 to take the lead, ended the day with a DNF, but while many question McLaren's strategy, Piastri puts the blame for his Hungaroring nightmare squarely at the feet of Carlos Sainz.
Having pitted, and seeking to remain within pit-stop distance of his teammate, Piastri was lapping Sainz when the Spaniard crashed into him, claiming that the Australian was in his blind spot.
"Get out of the way you f****** idiot," shouted Piastri over his radio. "Oh my God!" he added.
However, in truth, the Australian was already on the back foot due to McLaren's strategy.
Though running behind Piastri, Lando Norris had asked to pit first, however the Briton was told that Papaya Rules made this impossible. Following the first round of stops the Australian still had the lead, despite balance issues with his car.
However, come the second round of stops, when he was brought in to cover Lewis Hamilton, he rejoined in fifth, while Norris opted to remain on track in a bid to overcut his teammate. It was at this stage that he clashed with Sainz.
However, adding to his understandable frustration was his feeling that his team pitted him at entirely the wrong time, sending him back out into heavy traffic.
Told he had lost out to Norris due to the Sainz clash, Piastri replied: "Oh mate, don't even f******* talk to me right now. Nice of you guys to factor that one in by the way, thanks," he added, referring to the traffic.
Speaking at race end, Piastri admitted that in view of the Sainz incident he had hoped the team would stall Norris's stop, thereby allowing him to remain ahead. However, he admitted that this would have compromised the Briton in terms of the threat from Lewis Hamilton.
"In the moment I was hoping maybe they would not pit Lando because of that incident, to at least give me the chance to stay in the lead," he told Sky Sports, "but I think that's not very reasonable. So I was more just very upset in the moment about what had happened. I think the timing of my pit stop was fine. We wanted to beat Lewis and that's what we needed to do to do that."
In subsequent interviews he reiterated his belief.
"I think the timing of my stop was fine," he said. "We wanted to cover off Hamilton, which was perfectly normal.
"Without getting crashed into, I would have been ahead of Lando still," he added. "Obviously, when Lando came out ahead, I knew I had no pace to go and attack him, so I knew my chances of winning the race were done from there. So, in the moment, I was pissed off that I'd lost the lead, but that wasn't the fault of the team. It was Carlos' fault.
"I felt maybe the team could have not pitted Lando if it was a two-car race, but I know it's not a two-car race," he acknowledged. "I know that Lando's got his own race to try and win and there's other people. They can't just not box Lando because of something out of his control and out of my control. From that side of things, it's fine. I was just very, very pissed off in the moment about what happened.
"How the race unfolded meant that with Oscar, we went and covered Hamilton, and then there was some situation with the back markers," team boss Andrea Stella explained. "Lando was very quick once he had the lead, and he took advantage of this pace and the fact that there was some delay for Oscar. That's racing. We are McLaren Racing, and today it was great racing.
Asked about the clash with Sainz, Stella said: "It caused quite a bit of loss of time. We know Carlos is such a fair driver. Correct. So if this is happening, it means that something wasn't working correctly. I understand that the blue panels maybe was the problem.
"Certainly after that we told our drivers to be just super cautious because for some reasons the back markers seemed to be struggling more than normal."
"For me, there's no excuse at all," Piastri told Viaplay when asked about the clash with Sainz. "That's got to be one of the dumbest things I've ever seen on a race track. I don't really care what excuse you give.
"I knew there were blue flag issues," he continued, referring to the Spaniard's claim that there was no blue light warning on his steering wheel, "but there were blue flags on all the marshal signals.
"I was right behind him," said the Australian. "I couldn't believe what happened. Getting crashed into by a lapped car is never one of the things you expect that can go wrong in your race. I don't really care if he didn't see me. The fact that he didn't and no one told him or there was a lack of complete awareness is unacceptable. He was fighting Fernando for last place like it was the world championship. It cost me the lead of the race.
"He's quite critical of others," he added. "Others have given him some stick before for being frustrating on track. When you go and do something like that, I think maybe you should look in the mirror a bit.
"It's definitely a lost chance, yes," he said of the race. "The pace wasn't great at all on the hard tyres, but I felt like as long as I held track position, I had a decent chance of hanging on to the end.
"It wasn't going to be pretty," he admitted, "but I felt like it was possible. From that point on, pretty much everything that could have gone wrong, even the things you never think of, did go wrong."
Asked if the gearbox issue that saw him retire was due to riding the kerbs, he said: "I don't know. When it broke I was taking my normal line, so I'm not sure."
Check out our Sunday gallery from the Hungaroring here.
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