On the face of it, Logan Sargeant likely achieved all of the goals he could have realistically set himself for his rookie campaign in Formula 1.
Keep his race seat until the end of the season? Check. First American driver in three decades to score a world championship point? Check. Secure a contract extension for 2024? Check. Help Williams to their best championship finishing position since 2017? Check.
But Sargeant is an intelligent, contemplative kind of character. He knows full well that the fact he’ll be on the grid in March makes him the luckiest driver in the field – because he could have had no complaints if Williams had chosen against a second season of the Logan Sargeant experience.
It had all started so promisingly in Bahrain. You only get one grand prix debut and Sargeant made a genuinely strong start to his Formula 1 career. He just missed out on a Q2 berth at the very first attempt, with an identical lap time to Lando Norris, then gained three places over his first racing lap in F1. He ran a similar pace to team mate Alexander Albon and finished a very respectable 12th after not making any errors of note. But keeping that excellent first race momentum over the early phase of the season proved to be just too difficult for the young rookie.
He should have secured his first Q2 appearance the next round in Jeddah but for a silly error running outside the white lines on the run to the line on his fastest qualifying lap rendering it null and void. While Albon was fighting for points in Melbourne, Sargeant spent the Australian Grand Prix near the back and was lucky not to earn a penalty for taking out Nyck de Vries at the final restart.
Over the bulk of the season, Sargeant appeared to be putting the ‘rookie’ back into ‘rookie mistakes’. He crashed out of sprint qualifying in Baku and missed the sprint race as a result. He ruined his home grand prix in Miami by damaging his front wing on the opening lap in a clumsy incident with Lance Stroll. He made multiple errors during the Monaco Grand Prix – albeit his first ever experience of a Formula 1 car in wet conditions – then crashed in practice in Barcelona. He had a spin at the Hungaroring chicane late in the race, then aquaplaned off the road in practice at Spa-Francorchamps to give his mechanics more repair work to do.
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