Sargeant’s ‘safety-critical’ fault wasn’t new

In brief

Sargeant suffered “critical” fault before

Williams team principal James Vowles said Sargeant’s lock-up at turn four during the race, which briefly brought him to a stop, was caused by a fault on his steering wheel.

“Drivers are frequently adjusting what’s happening with the brake bias and how much the brake migrates forwards and backwards,” he explained in a video released by the team. “There’s a rotary [dial] to be able to do that, and in that circumstance what happened is all of a sudden the brake bias went very, very forward. You saw that with the front locking he had.

“The car was otherwise fine, but clearly we could not have uncommanded moving of that brake bias and we need to understand that immediately. That sort of fault is critical both for racing and also safety.”

Sargeant finished last, two laps down as a result of the delay. He said the problem happened before.

“It was frustrating as we had the steering wheel electronics issue in qualifying and then it returned,” he said, “so the most important thing is that we need to understand the root cause of this and get it fixed.”

Horner in the eye of the storm

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner had the support of his wife Geri during Saturday’s race after documents allegedly relating to the company’s investigation of him were leaked. Chalerm Yoovidhya, who owns 51% of the soft drinks company and is reported to be backing Horner, made his latest appearance at a race alongside them (pictured).

Jos Verstappen (also pictured) heaped pressure on Horner, saying over the weekend “the team is in danger of being torn apart” and “it can’t go on the way it is.”

Onboard the F1 flypast

Sebastian Vettel previously drew attention to the unnecessary emissions created by flying almost empty aircraft over tracks before F1 races as publicity stunts. Influencer Michael Downie got a first-hand look at how the pre-race flypast at the Bahrain Grand Prix is arranged, though the question of waste never came up:

Links

Motor racing links of interest:

Wer letzte Nacht am schlechtesten geschlafen hat: Horner (Motorsport Total – German)

‘Ford is currently said to be discussing at the…