Nyck de Vries has avoided placing blame on Logan Sargeant after a collision with the American put them both out of the Australian Grand Prix. Sargeant's Williams made contact with the AlphaTauri at the penultimate race restart of the event on Lap 57, forcing each driver to retire from the running. Following the race, Sargeant was apologetic for the incident, while de Vries did not point any fingers over what happened. "It can happen," de Vries explained. "Everyone can make a mistake and a misjudgement. It's a racing incident, we'll move on and hope for a better race next time."
De Vries reflects on 'mess' of race
In response to the suggestion that he was never in the right place at the right time prior to his exit from the Grand Prix, de Vries said: "I think that's the right way to sum up our race. "We did well in the beginning on the Hard [tyres] to kind of hold on, and I saw it coming towards us because a lot of Medium starters went quickly to the Hard when the Safety Car came out. "But then when the red flag came out, obviously all the Medium starters got a free pit-stop to the Hards, and then we had to complete our mandatory pit-stop and went to the Mediums." Alongside this, de Vries says that he experienced an issue with his car for much of the event, resulting in him labelling his race as a "mess". "With the incident with [Esteban] Ocon, I damaged my front wing, so basically I drove around the whole race with a broken front wing, meaning I picked up front graining very early," the Dutchman added. "So it was just a mess." De Vries and Sargeant remain the only two drivers in the field yet to score a point in 2023, while de Vries' AlphaTauri teammate Yuki Tsunoda claimed his debut point of the campaign in Australia.
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