Sargeant’s performances show “I was wrong and Williams were right”

Williams team principal James Vowles says he overlooked Logan Sargeant’s potential earlier in his career, after impressing the team on his Formula 1 debut.

Sargeant came within a thousandth of a second of reaching Q2 on his debut in the Bahrain Grand Prix, then raced to 12th. His second weekend proved more challenging: A track limits error was among several mistakes which meant he was slowest in qualifying, after lapping close to team mate Alexander Albon’s pace, but Sargeant made it up to 10th in the first stint of the race before finishing a distant 16th.

Vowles, who took over as Williams team principal during the off-season, said he’d seen Sargeant’s F1 potential when testing for the new season began.

“From the first laps of testing immediately you could see that the pace was there,” said Vowles on Friday in Saudi Arabia.

“I was a little bit reticent in wondering whether it would take him a little bit of time to get used to it. The second aspect is, [Bahrain was] his first grand prix. The pressure on your shoulders is enormous and he took it in his stride.

“He was three-wide through turn one. Normally in your rookie race, that ends up in disaster and he just dealt with it, with enormous amounts of maturity. From then onwards, and I’m sure as you’ll see, throughout the year, he’ll step forward.”

Sargeant’s feedback has been “very good,” said Vowles. “He has this young, fiery passion that comes with things. He wants every millisecond you can out the car.”

Vowles said he was first impressed by Sargeant when the pair worked together at Mercedes during Sargeant’s junior single-seater career, and compared him favourably to McLaren’s highly-rated 2023 newcomer Oscar Piastri.

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“My path with Logan actually crossed several years [ago]. He came to Mercedes as a simulator evaluation [driver] and I was interested in looking at him because he had performance, especially when you go back to his Formula 3 performance in an average team. He was there with Oscar and I rate Oscar also highly.

“At the time in Mercedes we had a good suite of drivers, so that was where my relationship with him ended. Then, prior to me arriving at Williams, Williams funded – it’s very important to state this – his Formula 2 career, so he is now salaried as a professional driver….