Williams to investigate strange reason behind Sargeant’s crash

Williams Team Principal James Vowles has insisted his team will look into why Logan Sargeant suffered a hydraulic failure that ended his Dutch Grand Prix in the barriers.

The American triggered an early Safety Car when crashing for the second time on the weekend, sliding wide at Turn 8 and spinning into the tyre wall.

He reported over team radio that he felt something break, indicating it was not driver error that caused the accident.

“To explain what happened with Logan, he took a kerb that he had been hitting quite a few times on Friday and in fact, during the race,” Vowles told F1TV.

“We had the engineer very quickly look through and he hit it in at least the last four laps [before the crash].

“On that particular lap, he lost hydraulic pressure. When you lose hydraulic pressure, your steering systems are hydraulic, so he had no steering assist and went off.

“This wasn’t a replication of what we saw before. What we need to understand is why we saw such spikes and why we lost hydraulic pressure there.

“He was gutted because you always question yourself, you question everything. He knows given how messy [the race] was, it was chaos out there, there were opportunities.”

On the other side of the garage, Williams managed to bag points with Alexander Albon, who crossed the line in eighth place.

Williams now sits in a clear seventh in the Constructors' Championship on 15 points, all of which have been scored by Albon.

Vowles hailed the 27-year-old's impact on the Grove-based squad, stating: “He is very good at providing direction to the team.

“He is very good at understanding where the limitations and weaknesses of himself and the car are, and where he needs to focus.

“I think he has a platform now where we can talk about it.

“What we need is to provide him with a car that is continuously moving forward and developing over the next months and years.”