Drivers were plagued by a system error during the Hungarian GP, causing a lot of confusion about the blue flags. Because the light signals along the track and on the steering wheel did not work properly, the drivers had to rely on old-fashioned blue flags and information from the pit wall. This led to frustration for Max Verstappen, who lost a lot of time behind both Racing Bulls; Arvid Lindblad explains what happened in the cockpit.
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While Verstappen tried to keep a fast Lewis Hamilton at bay, he encountered the two Racing Bulls drivers, who were engaged in a duel with each other. However, the two backmarkers hardly made any space for the four-time world champion, so he could not immediately lap them. “What idiots, my god,” Verstappen roared over the radio. Lindblad later explained that the system malfunction caused a lot of confusion and that he was largely dependent on the tools in his cockpit.
Not ideal
“It’s not very difficult, because we have the virtual mirror, so we know which car is in front and behind us,” he explained to the media. “In addition, we can see the gaps between the different cars and of course we have the regular mirrors, which all make it a bit easier. Especially for the cars that were a lap ahead, it was not ideal, I think.” The blue light signals showed problems early in the race. “In the seventh lap I already saw blue flags for Pérez, but he could not possibly be that far behind yet,” the 18-year-old driver noted. “So yes, I don’t know exactly what was wrong with the system.”
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“After that it turned out they couldn’t show the race numbers,” Lindblad continued. “They only showed a blue flag, which was not the most useful information. But the team helped me and I looked at the time differences on my dashboard to get out of the way in time and disturb the leaders’ race as little as possible.”
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