Sargeant's Car 'Wasn't On Same Specs' As Albon's Midway Through 2023 Vowles Reveals
F1Monday, 19 February 2024 at 00:30
James Vowles admitted Logan Sargeant didn't have a car that performed equally for some part of the season compared to Alex Albon.
Logan Sargeant had his first season in F1 last year, and it may not have gone as well as he had hoped. The final Championship standings show a place difference between him and his teammate, Alex Albon.
Sargeant has been heavily criticized by F1 fans who compared his performances to those of his more experienced teammate.
However, as the team principal of the team, James Vowles, lately revealed, the difference between his two drivers might not have been as significant as it seemed. He told the media:
"At the end of the year, I was pretty open about this, perhaps midway through the year, his car wasn’t in the same specs of Alex."
Williams wanted to focus their budget primarily on the development of the future car as the team wrote off the 2023 season. As a consequence, there weren't enough upgraded parts at one time for both team's cars, and Albon got the faster one.
"We were running out of bits because I was putting our focus in 2024. I didn't want to spend time building new bits, I want to spend time building next year's success, and the result of that is that he was slightly down on performance."
Albon beat Sargeant in all of the qualifying sessions of the season, so the fact remains that he was the faster one. But the team principal wanted to emphasize he might not have been as much quicker than the American driver as everybody thought.
"So at times where the world thought he was really underperforming, it wasn’t as offset as people felt."
According to the team principal, the 23-year-old had an equally performing car at the end of the season. It was also towards the end of the season that Sargeant's performance improved, and he even scored his first point during the United States Grand Prix. Vowles added:
"At the end of the year, when they were on the same equipment, he started to fall right back into where I needed him to be – and what I've asked him to do is that momentum needs to continue."
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