Vowles makes apology to Schumacher after "foolish" comments
F1 News
Coming into this race weekend at the Italian Grand Prix, one of the biggest stories was that Logan Sargeant had been dropped by James Vowles and Williams, with Sargeant's fate decided by a poor Dutch Grand Prix last time out. Vowles had the choice between Franco Colapinto, Liam Lawson, or Mick Schumacher to replace Sargeant, but went with Colapinto. While speaking to the media yesterday, the British team boss made a comment about Schumacher, and he has now come out and apologised to the German.
Vowles spoke yesterday about the decision to replace Sargeant, and how they came up with the decision to replace him with the Williams junior driver and F2 racer Colapinto. During that discussion with the media, which included GPblog, about the process of replacing Sargeant, Vowles made a comment about Schumacher, saying the German is a 'good' driver, but he is not a 'special' driver.
Vowles apologies to Schumacher for his comments
However, after making those comments about the Mercedes reserve driver, Vowles spoke to F1TV, wanting to clarify the comments he made on Friday: "Mick is in a World Championship team that has chosen him as a reserve driver and there’s good reason behind it, it’s because he’s an incredibly strong candidate. I am not here to put Mick down."
Vowles continued with his apology by saying: “The word ‘special’, I used it in the context of multiple World Champions like Ayrton Senna, and Lewis [Hamilton] as well. Clearly, that’s a foolish thing to do because that’s the comparison. Here’s where Mick is, he’s had a tough run of it, he has made some exceptional progress and he’s in a very strong team around him. But I’ve apologised to Mick as well. He didn’t request anything but it’s important to me because he’s incredibly close to me and it just came off entirely the wrong way."