Logan Sargeant moved within four penalty points of an automatic ban after he was sanctioned for an error during a Safety Car period in today’s Chinese Grand Prix.
The Williams driver reached the Safety Car line side-by-side with Nico Hulkenberg as the Haas emerged from the pits. Although Hulkenberg reached the line slightly ahead, Sargeant moved in front.A similar scenario happened earlier in the race involving Lewis Hamilton and Pierre Gasly, where Gasly passed Hamilton despite the Mercedes reaching the line first. That was rectified when Gasly let the Mercedes driver through, but Sargeant did not to the same for Hulkenberg.
The stewards therefore ruled he had overtaken another car during the Safety Car period and gave him a 10-second time penalty, plus two penalty points on his licence.
Sargeant moves onto a total of eight penalty points. He will carry that many until at least the Italian Grand Prix. If he incurs four more penalty points during that time he will face an automatic ban.
Sargeant, who finished 17th, said the penalty “doesn’t really matter in the end.”
“From my perspective, I thought I crossed the line first. When the cars are going at such different speeds, I don’t know how I could’ve known the true order.”
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In the incident involving Hamilton and Gasly, the Mercedes driver’s race engineer Peter Bonnington told him he reached the line first.
Sargeant’s team mate Alexander Albon avoided a penalty after being investigating for forcing Pierre Gasly off the track. The stewards ruled Albon did not deliberately force the Alpine off the track as they fought for position at turn 14.
“Car 23 [Albon] clearly had its front axle at least alongside the mirror of the other car by the apex of the corner,” they noted.
“The car was driven in a safe and controlled manner throughout the manoeuvre (entry, apex and exit) and did not, in our view, (deliberately) force the other car off the track at the exit. The line taken by car 23 was a natural line for that corner and we could not expect car 23, in these circumstances, to have taken a different line to create further space for car 10 [Gasly].
“It also appears to us that Car 10 may have left the track briefly because the car bottomed out over the kerb.”
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- Williams accept ‘harsh but correct’ penalty for Sargeant
SjaakFoo (@sjaakfoo)
21st April 2024, 13:00
Ridiculous that this infraction, something literally invisible to the driver and even the team unless you have access to all the data and camera angles the stewards get, is somehow deemed just as bad as Stroll plowing another driver out of the entire race.
Because that makes sense. Great job once again, FIA.
notagrumpyfan
21st April 2024, 18:48
The stewards should’ve penalised the race director for not informing Williams about who reached the line first (I assume they didn’t).
Only if Williams/Sargeant ignored this, then they have ground to penalise them.
But I guess Williams could’ve checked the timing boards, which I assume showed Hulkenberg ahead (I’ll check the replay). Based on that they also could’ve/should’ve corrected this immediately.
S
21st April 2024, 13:17
The Williams team dropped the ball again – as though they don’t have detailed timing data staring them in the face for the entire event.
Not great for Sargeant, but F1 supposedly being a ‘team sport’ brings both upsides and downsides.
Neil (@neilosjames)
21st April 2024, 13:39
Surprised at penalty points, as I saw this one as a team error. The team could (via slow-mo replay, which is what I needed with the benefit of being able to wind the footage back and pause it) establish the proper order and ask him to fall behind, but there’s no way Sargeant could have known from where he was sitting.
Jere (@jerejj)
21st April 2024, 13:41
Race engineer should’ve informed him, so a team error.
BasCB (@bascb)
21st April 2024, 14:02
Agree with the rest of you here – this was clearly a case of the team failing to correctly inform their drivers. Giving some kind of penalty – fine. But giving the DRIVER a rather hefty amount of penalty points for something he himself couldn’t have known was wrong and was not able to correct?
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
21st April 2024, 14:53
Leave it to the regulators to steal money from poor teams and throw them under the bus at a moments opportunity. #jokes
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
21st April 2024, 18:34
Not that I think they will ever let any driver reach 12 points, but I wonder if, in the 1% case where sargeant hits 12 points, it will give williams an excuse for a permanent replacement.
Dex
21st April 2024, 20:28
They still have to find the excuse for hiring him in the first place. Sacking him would not look like a harsh move at all. After all, after what they did with taking his car away and even leaving him with the worse chassis as a “reward”, I’m not sure that there’s much to do in terms of PR. Bringing him in was a mistake, humiliating him like that was also a mistake (in my humble opinion), but at the end of the day he doesn’t belong in F1 as it stands. His face, whenever we see it on screen, says it all. He knows it himself.
Mark (@blueruck)
21st April 2024, 23:54
no way either driver knew who hit the line first, I guess that is the FIA point, the teams should have looked when it was so close.
I understand the teams don’t want the FIA calling them with hints, rough way for the letter of the law to be followed.