Williams make Sargeant commitment for 2024 amid questions over his F1 future
Williams intend to give Logan Sargeant a second season to prove his Formula 1 credentials.
The American racer has been under intense pressure as his pointless streak continues. And the fact his seat is the last to be confirmed for 2024 has only thrust his struggles further into the spotlight.
Sargeant also hasn't helped himself with a string of crashes, including two at the Dutch Grand Prix and a collision with the barriers in Singapore. Last Sunday, at Suzuka, he caused huge damage to his car in a qualifying smash.
Though Mick Schumacher rumours are understood to be wide of the mark, there has been talk of Liam Lawson or Felipe Drugovich being in the frame to replace Sargeant. But Williams team principal James Vowles has moved to pour cold water on such talk.
In a video released by the team, Vowles made it clear that he wants the Floridian to have a second year to prove himself. "Logan has very clear targets that he has to hit before the end of the season and we're working with him continuously," he said.
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"That's the important point – we're working with him. We want him to succeed, and we want him in the car next year. This is very much on us as well.
"We have taken someone straight from Formula 2 without any significant testing, put a day and a half in Bahrain in this car, and then wished them well on a season that has been awfully challenging for rookie drivers, full stop.
"We will continue to work with Logan and invest in Logan, as we want him to succeed. "He's on a journey with us as Williams. We have a young driver programme that we will continue to invest in. Only at the point where all of us come to the conclusion that we've reached the end of that road will we make any decisions. But we're nowhere near that yet."
Vowles went on to offer up a key reason why the performance gap between Sargeant and team-mate Alex Albon has been so significant. "First and foremost, Logan is not on the same aerodynamic specification as Alex was," he explained.
"We have updates that are on Alex's car that are not on Logan's due to the amount of attrition we've had this year. So often when you see a performance offset, it's not quite what it would seem on the timing pages.
"Furthermore, to that, if we look at the case of Suzuka, he did a build-up across the weekend. As he went into FP3. he did a time that matched Alex and, as we go into qualifying until the accident, he was overlaying line on line within a 10th of Alex's performance as well, at one of the trickiest circuits of the season.
"So, the progress is there in certain forms, but very clearly being marred by a number of other issues and accidents that have appeared as well."
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