Alfa Romeo reveal cause of Kimi Raikkonen-Nikita Mazepin pit crash

Raikkonen, Alfa Romeo — Photo: © LAT Images

Hungarian Grand Prix

Alfa Romeo reveal cause of Raikkonen-Mazepin pit crash

Mazepin retired from the Hungarian Grand Prix after Raikkonen was wrongly released from his stop

Sam Hall

Tuesday 3 August 2021 14:54

Alfa Romeo head of track engineering Xevi Pujolar has explained a failure in the team's "traffic light" system was behind Kimi Raikkonen's unsafe release in Hungary.

At the restart of the Hungarian Grand Prix following a red-flag period in the wake of two separate first-lap collisions, every driver other than Lewis Hamilton pitted for slick tyres.

Amid the chaos, Raikkonen was released from his pit box into the path of Nikita Mazepin, with the contact resulting in the Russian's retirement as the right-front wishbone was broken on the Haas.

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"With Kimi, with his pit stop when everyone was coming in at the same time, we had an issue with our traffic light system that meant it just didn’t work well and he left when Mazepin was coming in, unfortunately," explained Pujolar.

“It just showed green, red, green, something [like that]. Then it was green but actually it should have stayed red so the system didn’t work properly.”

Williams fight not over

Raikkonen was handed a 10-second penalty for the incident but still scored a point for finishing 10th following Sebastian Vettel's disqualification for a fuel irregularity.

With Williams finishing seventh and eighth to secure 10 points, however, Alfa Romeo has now dropped to ninth in the constructors' standings.

Trailing by seven points, Pujolar conceded: "It will be not easy but it is possible and we will try.

"At the end of the day, it could have been much worse from where they were at the beginning. [Nicolas Latifi and George Russell were third and seventh at the restart].

"After the first lap, when we had this big crash incident on lap one and you look at the positions that they had, so I am still happy about it."