F1 News: Logan Sargeant's Crashes Coming In The Way Of 2024 Budget
Logan Sargeant's crashes have been the highlight lately as the American driver has not only been out of form but, has been crashing his on multiple occasions, causing the Williams team to incur severe expenses. Now though, his costly mistakes have been eating into the team's 2024 budget.
2023 has been an impressive season for Williams overall, considering the way they've bounced back after assembling the potent FW-45 in the winter last year. Leaving aside Sargeant's struggles, Alex Albon has been the sole warrior for the team to date as he has been consistently earning points for the team this season.
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Williams is currently witnessing its best Grand Prix year since 2017, thanks to the leadership of James Vowles who has been mighty active in transforming the team's staff, tools, and infrastructure to ensure it can battle the 'big teams' in F1.
However, what seems to be coming in the way of the team's progress is a strong driver pairing. While there has been no doubt about Albon's delivery, the same cannot be said for Sargeant who has scored zero points so far in the season, in addition to five DNFs.
It's not that the rookie driver is unable to produce results. In Bahrain, Austria, and Great Britain, the 22-year-old driver came quite close to earning points. Mistakes do happen and he was allowed a grace period for the same reason but, as of today, the mistakes outweigh the achievements.
Sargeant is yet to out-qualify Albon this season as the average difference in their lap times is over half a second, which is more than any other teammate pairing. Of course, it must be said that Sargeant has often been second to receive updates on his FW-45 and as a result, he has suffered from a slower car on many occasions.
Williams F1
However, progress on his part still seems to be a requirement, a point that has been agreed upon by him. Vowles has been a supportive boss who is in the process of evolving the team's environment to make it more learning-friendly for rookie drivers.
However, the former Mercedes strategy director revealed during the Japanese GP weekend that Sargeant's crashes have compromised developments for 2024 as they'll now have to focus on producing more spare parts. He told the media:
“Under the cost cap, what you don’t want to be doing is overproducing parts. We’ve had more attrition than expected, I think it’s fair to say.
"We have enough to deal with the incident today [Sargeant’s crash in qualifying].
"But it means we’ll have to divert attention away from other items [for 2024] while producing more spare parts before the end of the year.”
