In his rookie Formula One season, Logan Sargeant struggled massively with Williams, earning just one point and finishing in 21st place in the Drivers’ championship standings. Williams showed their faith in Sargeant by allowing him a seat in the 2024 iteration of the racing series, but will the American driver do enough to repay Williams’ trust in him?
2023
Entering his rookie F1 season, Sargeant earned a well-deserved amount of hype in the paddock. The year prior, in 2022, the now 23-year-old driver achieved fourth place in Formula Two, showing off his racing prowess in the Carlin livery. Along the way to this very respectable finish, Sargeant earned a total of 4 podiums, two of them as a race winner. He also scored points in all but one race that he was able to finish that season. By all means, Sargeant seemed ready to help usher in a new era of competition for Williams with the more experienced Alex Albon by his side. Unfortunately, this was not the case.
Beginning with a promising 12th-place finish in the opening race in Bahrain, Sargeant’s results only got worse. He followed up this hopeful result with a poor seven-race run that saw him finish no higher than 16th with multiple last-place finishes.
With many questioning just how long Sargeant had left in a Williams livery, he began to pick up some of his results halfway through the season, showing a glimpse of the driver Williams thought he could be. However, he was still finding a hard time getting to grips with the speed and ferociousness of the racing series. Sargeant earned a magical point at his home grand prix in the USA and finished off the season quietly afterward, seemingly doing enough to convince Williams to trust him for at least one more season.
Season Expectations
Williams seems to be at a turning point in their history under their young new team principal James Vowles, a former Mercedes engineer who worked closely with Toto Wolff during Mercedes’s reign of dominance in F1. He is of the new era of team principals, relying on numbers and hard data to achieve the heights they hope to reach.
Moving into his second year, Vowles will most likely be unforgiving in his tactics and require his drivers to be at the top of their game. Sargeant’s Williams teammate, Alex Albon, helped the racing outfit to jump into seventh place in the Constructor’s Championship the year before. Therefore, there will likely be pressure to build upon that result in the coming year, with the focus shifting on whether or not Sargeant will be the driver for that job.
Looking at the testing results from the previous week, Alex Albon seems to be sticking to his upward trajectory with Williams, finishing impressively with the eighth overall fastest time throughout three days. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about Sargeant who struggled throughout every session he was involved with, finishing with a disappointing 19th overall fastest time. All eyes will be on the driver early on in the season as Sargeant’s results need to match Williams’ aspirations for the driver to secure his spot on the British racing team in the following year.
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