Sargeant Held On to His Seat In Williams 'By Skin Of His Teeth' Says Hinchcliffe

Thursday, 18 January 2024 at 07:00

Indycar race winner and F1 analyst James Hinchcliffe included Logan Sargeant in his article about five drivers who have to show improvement in 2024.

The 2023 was Logan Sargeant's first season in Formula One. As the American driver found out, the competition is immense, and there is no place for a single mistake during a Grand Prix weekend.

The problem for the 23-year-old is that he lagged behind his experienced teammate, Alex Albon, who outperformed him in every single one of the 22 qualifying sessions. Hinchcliffe wrote in his article for the official F1 website:

"The American rookie held onto his Williams drive for 2024 by the skin of his teeth. He showed pace at times last season that was comparable to team mate Alex Albon, but his inconsistency and several costly accidents held him back from breakout results."

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Sargeant was the last driver with a question mark over his head as Williams waited quite a long time to confirm him as their second driver. For a while, it was even speculated he might not get a second chance from his team.

The American driver talked after the season about how challenging it was to adjust to the speed and technical complexity of the F1 car. Hinchcliffe explained:

"It is tough to overstate the challenge of being a rookie in F1 given the limited testing, and even more so if you haven’t had a year or two of an extensive training program to help you adapt to the speed and complexity of modern F1 machinery."

However, there was another rookie in F1 in the 2023 season - Oscar Piastri. He seemed to struggle a lot less when it came to adjusting to an F1 car and even managed to match the pace of Lando Norris on multiple occasions. The F1 analyst added:

"With a year of experience and the rookie stripe gone, this season will make or break Sargeant’s future F1 prospects."