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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2024 Chinese Grand Prix
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