Carlos Sainz warned after Verstappen FP1 impeding

Carlos Sainz received an official warning from FIA stewards after they ruled he impeded Max Verstappen approaching Turn 12 in first practice for the Hungarian Grand Prix, even though a disconnected radio cable meant he did not hear repeated warnings from Williams.

After hearing from Sainz, Verstappen and team representatives, and reviewing video, telemetry, team radio and in-car footage, the stewards found that Sainz's car 55 stayed on the racing line and braked early while Verstappen's car 3 was arriving on a push lap. Verstappen had to move to the right to avoid a collision.

The key mitigation for Sainz was the loss of radio communication. Team radio showed his engineer warned him more than once that Verstappen was approaching, but Sainz told the stewards the cable to his radio had become disconnected, so he never heard the messages. He said he had braked early for Turn 12 to warm his brakes before starting his own push lap.

That explanation reduced the penalty, but it did not clear him. The stewards said that, although the radio problem explained why Sainz missed the warnings, "in circumstances where the driver was without the benefit of warnings from the team, he ought not to have been preparing his brakes on the racing line and, by doing so, he hindered Car 3." Because the incident happened in Free Practice and "did not in fact endanger the driver of Car 3," they chose "to impose a warning."

Verstappen avoided punishment for his response immediately after the incident. The stewards found he slowed significantly at Turn 12 and gesticulated to show his frustration before Sainz passed him again, but Sainz said he was "not in any way affected" by Verstappen's action and no other car was involved, so the case ended with no further action.

Sainz was also cleared in a separate erratic-driving investigation later in the session involving Alpine's Paul Aron. The stewards accepted Sainz's explanation that his low-fuel push lap had already been compromised before Turn 9, that he followed the usual line through the corner, and only aborted the lap at the exit before Aron repassed him at Turn 10.