The name Colton Herta dominated the mid-season driver market chatter as Red Bull endeavoured to bring the driver who won his third IndyCar start as an 18-year-old into Formula 1.
The FIA said ‘no’ to that, but while Red Bull looked elsewhere another young American racer was making his care for a promotion to the grid for the 2023 F1 season.
Saturday at the United States Grand Prix therefore began with two big news stories for American fans: one was the extension of a free-to-air television deal, and the other was the announcement that next year an American driver should be on the F1 grid.
The timing of Williams’ announcement of Logan Sargeant for 2023, pending he acquires an FIA superlicence, could not have been better for capturing the attention of a wider audience than F1 news usually attracts.
A day earlier Sargeant had made his F1 practice debut with the team, and a year prior he had been announced as a member of Williams’ driver academy, shortly after his IndyCar test debut had been called off. Some 14 months before that, Williams was acquired by New York-based investment firm Dorilton Capital.
At last year’s US GP, Williams’ head of vehicle performance Dave Robson said “the USA now represents a second home race for us”. Next year’s calendar will include three such races following the additions of Miami and Las Vegas.
Sargeant’s promotion to a race seat may be a consequence of not only Williams’ transition to American ownership and F1’s expanding presence in the country, but his say that is not the reason why the 21-year-old has been chosen for next year.
“I would say it is good for F1 to have an American driver,” Williams team principal Jost Capito acknowledged, “[but] we didn’t pick Logan in the academy because he’s American.
“We picked him because of his success and his past in racing. Then if we take the kids that we put into the academy, it’s the objective to get them in the F1 car. I think that it’s also true to the young drivers.
“If you have a young driver who is ready for F1, and you have the seat, then you have to put these young drivers into the seat otherwise you’ve done something wrong. And that’s why we came to that conclusion that it’s the right thing. That Logan is American, I think it’s just nice to have. But it’s not the initiation of the decision.”
So what has Sargeant, who is currently fighting to be runner-up in the Formula…
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