Williams: Responsibility for Sargeant penalty in China ‘falls on us’

Williams team boss James Vowles says the British outfit must shoulder some of the blame for the penalty suffered by logan Sargeant in last weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix, insisting the onus falls on the team to provide better tools and information to prevent such incidents.

Sargeant was hit with an in-race 10-second time penalty and given two penalty points on his super licence for an illegal overtake on Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg during the race’s Safety Car period.

However, the transgression was anything but a clear-cut affair.

Sargeant was running down the main straight as Hulkenberg – whose car was not visible to the Williams driver – was exiting the pits.

The American driver only noticed the Haas just a fraction of a second before he crossed the Safety Car line. But the close proximity of the two cars at the line made it challenging to determine who was ahead.

• Read also: Sargeant: Zero feedback from FIA on Safety Car infraction ‘strange’

Unfortunately, replays showed that the German driver had crossed the line ahead of his rival, while Sargeant’s momentum had carried him past the Haas. This constituted an illegal overtake in the stewards’ book.

“It was a harsh penalty, when you see just matters of tenths translate into seconds, that’s difficult,” admitted Vowles in Williams’ post-race video debrief.

“More so, it’s very difficult for the driver to adjudicate whether he was ahead or behind.

“The responsibility falls to us and we missed it. We need to develop more and better automated tools that allow us to see what’s going on at that point because it took us multiple camera replays before even we could see where the difference was.

“From the onboards, which we have video for, you couldn’t tell who was ahead and who was behind.”

Sargeant was critical of the fact that no feedback on the issue was provided to the American during the race, either from his team or the FIA. At the end of the day, the Williams driver crossed the checkered flag a lowly P17.

“The way penalties work is when it’s in-race like that, there’s nothing you can do. You can’t appeal it. Once the penalty has been provided and given, it’s over effectively, it’s adjudicated by the FIA.

“Their adjudication was correct. We were behind at the line. Those are facts.”

Vowles made clear that the sanction could have been avoided by the team with better tools and processes.

“What we have to do is improve our system and processes to make sure we catch that faster, because you can correct it,” he said.

“Logan would have to have slowed down during that initial incident, a few seconds later, let the car back through again, and then that would have corrected that position.

“It’s fine margins, but that’s what Formula 1 is all about.”

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