Williams should be even better in F1 Saudi GP

For the first time since Felipe Massa classified sixth in Australia in 2017, Williams scored points in the opening round of a season as Alex Albon snared 10th place in Bahrain.

The unexpected pace of the FW45, with Albon entering the round predicting his team to be slowest, was underlined by Sargeant running to a competitive 12th on his topflight debut.

But Sargeant reckons Williams should be stronger still on the high-speed Jeddah street circuit owing to a low-drag aero car concept that helps the team perform in a straight line.

Asked by Motorsport.com if the Grove squad, which ranked 10th and last in the 2022 constructors’ standings, could again battle in the midfield, the rookie said: “I think technically on paper, we should be better here than Bahrain.

“That doesn’t mean other [teams] won’t bring other things [to increase performance], so we really don’t know and it’s a very different track.

“It’s my first time driving an F1 car on a street track, so that’s obviously extremely challenging.

“There’s going to be a lot of variables. But hopefully we have a package that can be quick.”

Sargeant added that his focus now must be on memorising the race procedure to make it “second nature” so that he is not draining his “mental capacity” by have to consciously adapt in the moment.

The American continued: “From a team perspective, I don’t think we were quite expecting to have that level of performance. So that was definitely really positive.

“I think from my personal side, there was really no expectations.

“I learned a lot through the weekend. I not only showed myself that I had the pace but got through a lot of operational stuff in terms of my first race start, pitstops, tyre management.

“[I need to] get comfortable to the point where everything becomes second nature and all of these things just become natural rather than having to think about them and taking away mental capacity from what I need to get done.

“But I think having done it all once and gone through all the procedures, it’s already becoming more and more natural.”