F1 News: Williams Has Given Logan Sargent Until The End Of The Year To Hit Targets For 2024 Seat
Williams team principal James Vowles is willing to wait until the end of the year before reaching a conclusion about Logan Sargeant's future with the team. His seat is the only one to remain in Formula 1 currently.
The team wants to assess Sargeant's performance during the remaining Grand Prix races of the season to justify a contract extension. The American driver has displayed signs of having the pace but is yet to score a point.
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Despite another crash at Suzuka which adds to the list of many this season, Vowles stated he still had faith that Sargeant could step up his performance and continue his F1 journey with the team next season.
When asked after the Qatar GP about the time duration he was willing to give Sargeant to prove himself, the team boss replied that the driver had targets to achieve by the year-end. He told the media:
"I suspect it'll be to the end of the season. I think we've already committed to the direction of travel we're in. He has targets to hit and it'd be wrong to go against that decision point. So end of the year."
He also added that all he needed Sargeant to do was to put together more complete weekends. Vowles added:
"The pace is there. That's the thing that we wouldn't be able to fix or repair. But what happens is, when it comes down to the crunch time, there are elements of inconsistency that creep in, and in form of that, goes into an accident sometimes.
In Suzuka the lap he did was, line-on-line on the data with Alex [Albon], but obviously it's marred by the fact that the last corner, he had far too aggressive a throttle application and there was a crash, and a significant crash as a result of it.
What we're working with him on is actually the progression up until that point. He dialled it from two seconds away from Alex to within a tenth in FP3 – in fact, he was faster in FP3. And it's actually keeping that mindset all the way through that we're trying to do.
We have – and I've said this publicly – a responsibility to invest in our rookie drivers. We've put him there, and we've given him nearly no testing mileage.
I'm used to 30,000km, not 850km. But what we want to see is continued progress and now a focus on making sure we keep that consistency in there, which will then deliver results."
Frustrating Outcomes
The Williams team boss also explained how closely he assessed Sargeant's situation throughout the season. He feels that the rookie driver knows how to win but, gets caught up in a comfort zone eventually leading to frustration. He continued:
"Probably the worst thing that can happen [was] he went into Bahrain and overlapped with Lando in terms of Q1. He thought perhaps the challenge in front of him may not be as significant as it really is.
What you then saw after that time… and Alex has grown, I think across this season, and the gap started to grow, is you found a driver that's now frustrated.
His normal tools aren't producing the quality of laptime that was there previously. He knows how to win. He's won in Formula 3, won in Formula 2 but applying that now in Formula 1 and then not achieving results creates more and more frustration – and then that ends up with over-driving, fundamentally. That's the dialling back bit."
