'Can't Suddenly Become Max Verstappen': Damon Hill Advises Sargeant

Wednesday, 17 April 2024 at 00:30

Damon Hill (1996 Formula 1 Champion) shared his advice for the Williams driver Logan Sargeant, whose career is on the line this season.

Logan Sargeant made his F1 debut in 2023, but his performance was overshadowed by that of his much better-performing teammate, Alex Albon.

The teammate always sets the benchmark for every driver, so when Albon showed Williams's car could go much faster, he put the American driver under a lot of pressure.

Williams decided to prolong the 23-year-old's contract for 2024. However, it has many interesting candidates for next year, and Sargeant is literally fighting for survival at the moment.

He knows he has to show improvement compared to his teammate, but it seems the pressure is not having a positive effect on him. He crashed during a practice session and almost crashed again during the most recent race in Japan.

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Assessing Sargeant's performance, Damon Hill tried to identify on the latest episode of the F1 Nation podcast what the American driver could improve.

"There's only so much you can do. There's things you can affect and things you can't affect. And the things you can affect, obviously, are the things you need to put all your focus on. And that means driving."

"I think that his crash at Suzuka was a sign that he felt he had to do something brilliant as soon as possible. And I think that the panic should not set in, you need to keep a cool head to say, 'Listen, there's only so much you can do.'"

Hill suggested that the 23-year-old is overdriving his Williams and trying to improve everywhere at once, which leads to mistakes. He explained:

"And you have to drive a little bit within yourself. You can't suddenly become Max Verstappen in one mighty leap, you have to know yourself."

"So if he just does a good solid job in whatever race he comes up against, and just puts all the rest of it out of his head, because there’s nothing he can do about it anyway, then we’ll see what happens."