Logan Sargeant reacts to comments made by Marcus Ericsson, as Fernando Alonso is fine with the apology from the FIA officials.
After the comments made by Williams’ Sargeant in Hungary, former F1 racer and current IndyCar driver Ericsson shed some details of what he heard from his peers. The Swede stated that he heard about growing differences between the American driver and team boss James Vowles.
“I was told by some American friends who know Sargeant, he doesn’t have fun in that team,” said Ericsson. “He thinks it’s really hard and apparently he and Vowles don’t even talk with each other anymore, they barely greet each other. It’s completely cut off between them.”
Considering that Sargeant and Ericsson have never spoken to each other, the American F1 driver was amused by the Swede’s take on the matter of some other driver than himself. He played down of any differences with Vowles and cleared that they do talk.
“Marcus Ericson has a reputation of talking about other people without ever having been in a conversation with me in his life,” said Sargeant to media. “It doesn’t carry any weight, it’s not true. I just had a conversation with James here about 20 minutes ago. Most importantly, me and James we both come here, we want to do what is best for the team, we both work in the same direction for what is the best for the team.
“And ultimately what’s best for the team is best for me. It’s completely untrue. Like I said, I’ve never spoken with him in life. I don’t plan on it either. [With James] it was a group conversation there a minute ago, but I’ll speak to him separately. But I haven’t had the chance to yet.
“It’s been this way for a long time now. It is what it is. Like I always say, the most important thing is that we’re all working towards the same goal. That will never change. And we all want what’s best for the whole team,” summed up Sargeant, who noted that this is how F1 is and from outside, it will look like this.
It is something that he isn’t getting too worried about either. “I guess it is just how it goes, it hasn’t been a particularly easy season with the amount of things that have happened,” continued Sargeant. “From a team perspective, we have struggled in some areas, so of course it can look like our relationship has worsened from the outside but we just go to work as usual and keep trying to perform as best we can.”
Staying with the happening in Hungary, Aston Martin’s Alonso clarified what transpired at the end of qualifying under red flag for Yuki Tsunoda. With about two minutes remaining, both the Aston Martin cars were called in the parc ferme as a signal to end the session under the red flag.
But the FIA changed its decision and re-started the session. That caught out the FIA officials at parc ferme and certainly irked both Lance Stroll and Alonso, more so the Spaniard who unbuckled himself and had to be buckled up again by mechanics.
Videos surfaced of an enraged Alonso in the parc ferme, not just because of the mistake but also for getting his lap ruined due to the red flag despite having crossed the incident corner before the crash took place. The FIA officials, though, apologised to him extensively.
Alonso even spoke to FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem, but has since moved on from the honest mistake. “Yeah, yeah, I spoke with President Mohammed,” said Alonso. “Even on Saturday afternoon, as I said after qualifying, I never saw in any category to send two cars to parc ferme, with two minutes and half remaining before end of Q3.
“And then re-open the parc ferme and then go back to the garage, and things like that. These things are not nice, I know it was a mistake, they say sorry already 100 times. When I was in parc ferme, they were telling me, ‘go back in the car, sorry, sorry, sorry’, so it was not done on purpose or anything like that.
“We all make mistakes but in those moments you never expect to have those kind of mistakes, but it didn’t change anything. I was not able to improve my time or anything, so it was less painful,” summed up Alonso.
Here’s Aston Martin drivers on Hungarian GP team order
Here’s Fernando Alonso after qualifying
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