Logan Sargeant complains about lack of communication before his penalty in China

It all starts when Valtteri Bottas had to retire from the Chinese Grand Prix after losing his engine, the virtual safety car is activated and after a few laps, given the difficulty in moving the Sauber car, the real safety car asks the drivers to go through the pits.

Logan Sargeant then engages in a battle with Nico Hülkenberg, who had just left the pits, in order to be the first to cross the Safety Car line, located at the exit of the Pit Lane, which determines the order of the pack behind the safety car.

The Haas driver reaches this line, a fraction of a second before his rival, but with the speed advantage of the American, this makes him think the opposite and he then places himself in front. This is an illegal overtake. However, the Williams driver does not receive any message from his team or the FIA. He will later receive a 10-second penalty for a maneuver considered an illegal overtake.

There is also a bit of elevation at this point, and I suppose that makes things difficult to see when the cars are separated by quite a distance. I didn’t even think it was close, so for me, there was no discussion. So, to hear about it at the end of the race was a bit strange,” he explains to Autosport’s microphone.

A disconnected car

« I don’t know if the FIA could give us feedback. We were under the Safety Car for a while, I don’t know why they didn’t just tell me to give back the position. Obviously, I would have done it if they had said so, but to my knowledge, I thought I had crossed the line well before », laments Sargeant.

The 10-second penalty imposed on Sargeant dropped him to 17th place in the final standings, and occurred at the end of a weekend where he struggled to find consistent performance with his Williams, lamenting in qualifying that he found the car disconnected.

A change in the settings for the race between Saturday and Sunday forced him to start from the pit lane, and although his pace was promising at the beginning of the race, he thinks that the circumstances were unfavorable to him, especially during the safety car period.

“There have been good moments and bad moments,” he said. “I think the start of the race with the soft tires was good, and when we put on the medium tires, we were really well placed. But we could probably have done without this Safety Car because we would have done medium-medium stints and it would have suited us better.”

We put on the hard tires, and I didn’t even manage to get them up to temperature, immediately destroying the front tires. From that moment on, it was really difficult. I didn’t really understand the final relay, probably one of the most painful ones I’ve had to do. We’ll see if we can do better in the future.