American F1 driver Logan Sargeant has emerged unscathed, but his Williams FW46 was left in a sorry state due to a fiery crash that sparked red flags in Free Practice 3 for the Dutch Grand Prix.
Sargeant, 15 minutes into the session, briefly drove over grass on Zandvoort’s Turn 3 in slippery conditions, prompting a scary spin off the track that saw his cars crash into barriers.
“He’s completely lost it … That is a big, big crash,” F1 commentator David Croft said.
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Fellow commentator Anthony Davidson added: “He’s just eager to get his foot down on the exit of Turn 3 … That’s what it takes, you put your wheel on the grass and you lose an awful lot of grip. That’s a hard hit into the Armco barriers.”
Sargeant declared “I’m OK” over team radio, but had to promptly exit the cockpit as the rear of his car had caught fire.
Aussie Oscar Piastri was just behind Sargeant, but avoided the carnage.
It comes after Sargeant crashed in qualifying at the same GP last year.
It’s also a painful blow for Williams, given that the car was sporting a host of upgraded parts.
“There’s no good time,” Williams Team Principal James Vowles said minutes after the crash.
“There’s hundreds of hours spent on this update kit and it looks like it’s working well, but there’s few of them in the world. The worst time is when you’ve introduced it with small amounts of bits – and you put it into the wall of a circuit.
“The difficulty is it’s FP3, so qualifying is going to be upon us pretty quickly. You saw from the images, it’s in a pretty bad state.”
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