F1: American Logan Sargeant is the real deal

–by Mark Cipolloni–

At the Team Principals Press in Saudi Arabia on Saturday morning, new Williams F1 team boss James Vowles had this to say about Logan Sargeant:

“From the first laps of testing, immediately you could see that the pace was there. 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, it 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 1. Normally in your rookie race, that ends up in disaster, and he just dealt with it, with enormous amounts of maturity, and from then onwards, and I’m sure as you’ll see, throughout the year, he’ll step forward.”

As for his feedback?

“It’s Very good. It’s as you would imagine: he hasn’t got the experience that Alex brings to the team. But he has this young, fiery passion that comes with things. He wants every millisecond you can out of the car.”

“My path for Logan actually crossed several years prior to that. He came to Mercedes as a sim 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 [Piastri] 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. He 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 and Williams funded him because they had deep belief that he was the real deal.

“And my reticence came from the fact that prior to that it’s difficult to really judge him. But I have to say, he’s now been in the car, I now have the ability to look at his data, and he is here on merit, and as a result of Williams investing correctly in him, he’s now a professional driver deserving driver on the grid at the same time. So, it just shows you that my previous life I was wrong and Williams were right.”