In Defence of Logan Sargeant

Credit to Wikimedia Comms: Logan Sargeant Bahrain 2024

I know what you are all thinking. Why?

Why defend a driver like Logan Sargeant? A driver, who in his second season with Williams Racing, has made little marked improvements since his inception in 2023 and is still continuing to struggle in 2024. A driver that is supposedly in this sport due to his nationality and the financial and commercial backing that comes with it. A driver that, as of writing this article, has one single point to his name and was only earned due to his rivals acquiring penalties at last year's US Grand Prix. What is there to defend? Well that is what I am here to do. All of these takes that exist massively hide the great driver that Logan Sargeant is and that the constant criticism he suffers from is completely unwarranted. I am not here to say that Logan is this next generational talent akin to someone like Verstappen. There are very few drivers that are considered elite or even perfect across all of motorsport. But what I am here to say is that Logan Sargeant is great. Really great. His whole career has demonstrated that he is a brilliant driver and still is. To judge his talent based on F1 alone is glossing over the raw talent that he possesses and that despite his struggles in F1, he still has the potential to forge a great career in motorsport.  

But this is not to say his time in Formula 1 has been exceptional. Far from it. I will proudly defend Logan Sargeant but to do that and then say his time in F1 was great would be blinding myself through sympathy. To say he is terrible though is over exaggerating things and the best word to apply to Logan’s stint so far would be underwhelming. Joining a rookie class in 2023 which included Oscar Piastri and Nyck De Vries, a lot of eyes were on Logan Sargent to perform after he produced an amazing season in F2. But what ended up transpiring was a driver who looked to be well out of his depth. What was immediately apparent when watching Logan drive was how uncomfortable he looked every time he was in his car. His steering movements were incredibly erratic and over corrective and all the time he looked like he was fighting the car. Not once was there a moment of Logan being in complete harmony with his car. He was struggling all year to simply find control and was trying too hard to push an unstable F1 car to its very limits, mustering up spins, collisions and track limit violations as a consequence. Slight improvements have been made in 2024 but that erratic nature of Sargeant's driving is still clearly evident. And it is not to say the Williams car is bad because it is still a pretty competitive car. Throughout 2023, Williams yielded a seventh place in the constructors championship beating out competitors in HAAS, Alpha Tauri and Alfa Romeo Sauber. It has taken a slight step down in 2024 but points are definitely still within reach as has been seen on numerous occasions. But in both cases, extracting maximum performance requires driving these cars on the edge and beyond, and having that wealth of F1 experience to really tame and deal with an unstable car is something Sargeant does not have. 

But on the other side of the garage, that is a luxury which Alex Albon possesses which so far has proved vital in getting that car higher than it should be. Albon is in the midst of a pretty significant resurgence in F1 where he is arguably driving the best he ever has in his F1 career. His departure from Red Bull left his career in limbo but gaining the trust from Williams has given him new found confidence and is now overall more composed and more comfortable in Williams. Having driven the previous generation Red Bull RB16, an incredibly difficult and twitchy car, he has really honed in his skills in dealing with instability and now knows how to work his driving style around a twitchy car and fine tune his setup accordingly. He has built himself up again brilliantly and has now flipped the scenario he was once trapped in at Red Bull. He is now the undisputed team leader and his new long term deal to 2027 has distilled himself as the core component to rebuilding Williams. He may not be sitting at an elite level compared to the front runners in Verstappen and Leclerc, but he is still an incredibly solid midfield driver destined to only improve as the years go on. He is driving with such ease and comfort and this return to form really highlights the huge gulf in experience between himself and Sargeant. Logan also finds himself in Albon's shoes that he was in during 2020 and the same sentiments that were once echoed back in 2020 are appearing again with Sargeant. He, like Albon, was called up to F1 late, had extremely limited F1 testing time before his debut, was thrusted into a difficult car to drive and simply could not match his more experienced teammate in any area. The same struggles are clearly evident and no amount of tweaks and changes that he does are helping his desire for greater results.     

Underwhelming? Yes. Terrible? Not a chance. And this is where the defence begins. It is very easy for fans to clown on Sargeant for his mediocrity but there were moments when Sargeant was really on the cusp of breaking through. He may only be sitting on one point but he came so close on many occasions to gaining more. Whether it was through strategy blunders, reliability issues or unforced crashes from his opposition, he was agonisingly pushed off course when he was on track for solid finishes. Not to say that this was the case in every race but the ones where he did finish close to points deserve some plaudits. Possibly his most underrated drive actually came from Brazil in 2023 where despite qualifying in a lowly 19th, he fought through the field amongst all the traditional Sao Paulo chaos to bring his Williams home in 11th. If it managed to yield a point then more respect and attention would have absolutely been thrown his way but because he was just outside of the top ten, this has been quite easily forgotten by the majority of the F1 audience. Had more of his drives gone smoothly like this and without any hiccups, we might have seen a completely different Sargeant to what he is now. But because good races from him were always ruined, that has contributed hugely to the confidence within him being killed. His qualifying performances are also of note as he managed to excel on numerous occasions. There were times he was genuinely quick in his car and made it into Q3 multiple times. It began in Zandvoort 2023 with a last gasp effort in Q2 punching his ticket into Q3 and making him the first American to reach Q3 since Michael Andretti in 1993. He also managed a career best start of sixth in his home Grand Prix of Las Vegas, the highest for any American driver in decades. It failed to materialise into a dream points scenario for Sargeant again but his teammate Albon also suffered due to a strategy mistake from the Williams pit wall. He has had good qualifying performances and many opportunities for points and while some were lost through his own mistakes, other opportunities have been taken away from circumstances out of his control. Looking at a results sheet often fails to tell the full story of a driver's race and that is the case for Sargeant here. 

And then there are the circumstances stacked against him and suddenly you realise why he is struggling the way he is. It has been no secret the favouritism that exists within Williams as they have geared their development towards Alex Albon and favour him with the new upgrades and set up changes. I am not saying that this is a wrong decision as Alex is the undisputed team leader taking Williams into the future. But to give Alex the higher spec car and then expect Logan to perform equally against Albon in a much worse and lower spec car is huge pressure for a driver still fresh in the sport. Williams being an underfunded and underdeveloped team means that R&D is crucial for finding any speed possible. But that means both drivers need to perform with confidence to ensure the possibility of more points in the constructors championship and to handicap one of your drivers turns you into a one car team. And there is no better evidence of this than in Australia this year. During free practice, Alex Albon had a huge crash which completely wrote off his car for the whole weekend. Many teams always have a back up car in case of a huge accident like this but in a team like Williams, their infrastructure is years behind modern day standards and a spare chassis was not ready for Australia. But instead of Alex sitting out of the weekend, they asked Logan to step aside and to give up his car for Alex. Logan, who had a clean and solid practice session and was putting in solid times, had to give up his car to his teammate for doing nothing wrong. Looking at it from the perspective of the team and James Vowles, it was a logical decision to make. Albon is far and away the better driver in Williams and would probably have the better chance of scoring points on Sunday. But a fair decision? Absolutely not. To have Williams agree on this vote of no confidence in Logan shows a severe lack of trust for him to put in a solid performance in his car and I do believe that since this incident, Logan has not been the same driver to when he started 2024. Going forwards to Miami, Logan was then given Albon’s damaged chassis as a new one was still being built back at the factory; a pretty brutal performance handicap despite, and I say again, Logan doing nothing wrong.

What you now have is a driver who no longer has the confidence and feeling of his team supporting him and a team are openly admitting that he is not good enough to lead their charge if the one car situation ever arises again. Not only this but Williams have also been extremely public in actively looking for other drivers to fill his seat, which James Vowles has been on record stating this multiple times and is continuing this form of open honesty. Now honest assessments of a driver's performance are key for improvements, but in certain cases I do believe context matters when certain drivers are being criticised. Case in point is Daniel Ricciardo. He is a driver who is in the twilight years of his F1 career but could once perform toe to toe with the best in the F1 world. Yet for the past couple of years now, he has not demonstrated any credentials as a worthy candidate for Red Bull. The problem was once directed at McLaren, which is still true to an extent, but now with a year in Alpha Tauri/RB, no one can pin down where his driving has gone wrong. The RB is a good car this year and has Red Bull characteristics with its inherited parts from the RB19, but Daniel Ricciardo is struggling to earn any points whilst Yuki Tsunoda is outperforming him regularly in almost all areas. When discussing a driver as successful and experienced as Daniel Ricciardo, criticism against him is valid when his car is clearly up to scratch for points and he is not using his experience and talent to its fullest. When you have a rookie driver in Logan Sargeant who is struggling mentally on and off the track in a car that is extremely hard to drive, criticism is invalid as the circumstances he is in do not serve as a means to judge his talent as poor. Yet Logan's circumstances have not changed the medias views on him and journalists are still constantly bombarding him about his lack of talent and wheel knowledge which only serves to destroy his mental health. It really is devastating to see a driver like Logan being almost forced into this narrative of being a bad driver when he really is not, and the fact that no one is even acknowledging this side to his career contributing to his current state of mind is ridiculous.  

Another point in his defence is his year in racing in 2022. When discussing Sargeant's F1 struggles, people are saying he jumped too quickly from a rookie F2 campaign up to F1 and then complain that he was called up too quickly and did not have the results to justify a promotion. Well that season is what people easily forget about. Taking a closer look at his sole F2 campaign makes you realise why he got the call up to Williams in the first place. For a debutant in F2, Sargeant was very easily one of the best drivers in that year's F2 field. Composed of a grid that included future talents like Theo Pourchaire, Liam Lawson and Jack Doohan, Sargeant really excelled in what was expected to be a year of learning for him. The stats may only show two wins and four podiums but he overall put together a really consistent campaign where he scored points in 20 of the 28 rounds that year, a more than 70% scoring rate. In fact he honestly should have finished third place in the title race if not for some hideous luck but despite him finishing one point behind Carlin teammate Liam Lawson, he was far and away the better driver that year. And Liam Lawson is a driver that is being constantly praised and seriously considered for an F1 drive, so for Sargeant to, despite being a point short, excel against Lawson speaks volumes of his talent. And those two wins mentioned previously were achieved in such a convincing fashion. The Silverstone feature race was a real breakthrough weekend for his racing career. He took pole position on the Friday making him the first American to do so in F2, got a good haul of points in Saturday’s sprint race and then went on to complete a dominant lights to flag victory on Sunday’s feature race that really made the F1 world stand up and notice his talent. Austria was also a sensational highlight being only seconds away from the Trident of Richard Verschoor who was later disqualified for a technical infraction and giving Sargeant the win. He was down and out at the beginning of 2021 after failing to secure a F2 drive and to bounce back and produce an amazing 2022 season showed incredible resilience and dedication in Sargeant to reignite his shot at F1. People still say that Sargeant was rushed and that he needed another season to really hone his craft. But finishing as high as he did just one point off third place, he would have been wasting time having a second year. He adapted super quickly in just his debut and because of his results in F3 rolling on to 2022, he managed to access his F1 super licence anyways by finishing fourth so the overall championship was not even a concern. Had everything gone his way, we could have actually been speaking about Sargeant finishing closer to the Theo Pourchaire rather than Liam Lawson. But Logan still played his hand extremely well for his F1 drive and did not let Felipe Drugovich or next years championship affect him, a trap that Theo Pourchaire fell into and suffered because of it. In this game, you need to jump at the opportunity whenever you get the chance because there is no guarantee it will ever come around again. Logan knew this, Logan fought hard and Logan achieved it. And that is why his F2 season was amazing.

And the rest of Logan's junior formula resume is also glittering. Twelve karting titles, runner up in F4 UAE, third place in British F4, third place in the Macau GP and third place in FIA Formula 3. His junior career has been nothing short of great. Always in the fight for wins and always putting in consistent performances. His Formula 3 escapades deserve a special mention though because that was where his impact was really made on the FIA junior ladder. His debut season with Carlin may not have seen many points on the board overall but his teammate was future Formula 2 champion Felipe Drugovich and he managed to out pace and out race him all of  2019. The stats may show Drugovich with more points but Sargeant was far quicker across the whole season, and in a car that was at best a backmarker. Again, a time where results do not tell the full story. This performance was so good in fact that come 2020, he was called up to the top junior team in Prema Racing and immediately made a splash. Points in all but five races, six podiums and two race wins at Silverstone and Spa. All season long and up to the very last race in Mugello, he was going toe to toe with two future superstar drivers in Oscar Piastri and Theo Pourchaire for the Formula 3 title. But despite it being firmly in his grasp, a crash from his competition unfortunately took Logan out of contention in Mugello and put the title in the hands of teammate Oscar Piastri. But that was still an amazing campaign from him and one that does not get nearly enough discussion. The following year saw him with a lifeline drive with Charouz Racing after he failed to secure a budget for Formula 2 but again, much like with Carlin, he was dragging his backmarker car up to the very front and even managed a win at the final round in Sochi, the first win for Charouz racing in Formula 3. That drive alone you could argue was the very reason he was given a shot in the Williams Academy. To take an underdeveloped Charouz car and launch it to the top of the podium was a career defining and Williams was the only team that recognised this. 

To argue Logan did not warrant an opportunity at Formula 1 is crazy. He has demonstrated speed and consistency throughout his whole career and this carried through all the way up to season's end in Formula 2. He was always quick no matter what car he was in and he was always mixing it up at the sharp end of the field. Nationality has nothing to do with his F1 opportunity. I am sure it had a helping hand from a branding side but to say he was given the Williams seat by being American is just wrong. That is an attack I have seen time and time again when people reflect on why he was chosen after a string of rubbish performances. He is a seriously quick driver that earned his way up the motorsport ladder and performed to the maximum every time he got in his car across every series he raced. And that is why he made it to Formula 1. There are far worse drivers that made it to F1, or even F2 and F3, who were really terrible across the board in every area and to place Logan Sargeant into this same camp is ridiculous. But then should this act as a campaign for Logan to remain in F1? Absolutely not but not through Logan being a bad driver. The reality is that F1 can be a step too far for certain individuals and as much as Logan is fighting tooth and nail and showing real resilience, F1 is sadly not working. Everything and everyone is against him and the environment to really feel comfortable and perform is just not available to him. This is a problem that is not new as despite the talent pool in F2, many drivers have struggled to make a real name for themselves in F1. Mick Schumacher, Nicholas Latifi and Nyck De Vries, all had a wealth of experience and silverware and the end result in F1 was nothing short of underwhelming. Ultimately Logan has tried, and is still trying really hard to push through, but the dream is sadly falling away from him. Maybe in a better and more stable car we could have seen a different outcome but as of now, he seems to be firmly on his way out as the F1 world is going into meltdown discussing who the second Williams seat will go to. The list of potential drivers could go on forever but that feeling of inevitability in leaving F1 and the harassment from the media has yet again knocked on to poor Logan who is now under even more scrutiny. One can only hope that Sargeant himself sees the bigger picture that he needs a new venture outside of F1. But where would that be? Well I have the answer right here and I believe this would be the ideal destination for Logan going forwards. Indycar.

I think Indycar is perfect for Logan Sargent. The pros that come with this sort of move are endless. Arguably the biggest draw would be in the Indycar IR18 itself. A big problem with Formula 1’s ladder system to an extent seems to be a disconnect between F2 and F1. Rising through the junior ranks all the way up to F2 provides a great gradual learning curve but the jump between F2 and F1 is huge. That can be another topic for another day but since Sargeant thrived in Formula 2 previously, Indycar provides a baseline car that is similar to Formula 2 but is a huge step up in every single way. Like F2, Indycar's have no power steering and have the same basic forms of aero so the driving styles used in F2 can fully translate over to Indycar. Technology is much more rudimentary compared to F1 but that does not mean Indycar is a lesser series to F1. The shared chassis allows for much closer competition and with more options for strategy and tuning, the opportunity to make an impact is much higher. Not only this but he would be back in home company and not just by being back in the US. Andretti Global Indycar driver Kyle Kirkwood is a great friend of Logan Sargeant. They are both Floridian residents who have known each other since their early days in karting and despite Logan setting off to Europe, the connection was never lost. They both regularly go fishing together in their respective off seasons and they are both still supporting each other in their respective race series. The process for Sargeant to ease himself into the Indycar paddock would be eased with one of his best mates there to guide him through Indycar’s nuances. And then there is the obvious connection of being back on home soil as Logan has been travelling the world away from home for most of his life now. What he needs now more than anything is a feeling of comfort and racing back in the states is the perfect way to do that. Home tracks, home crowd and being in touching distance of his family.  

So which team would match perfectly for Sargeant? You could easily point towards AJ Foyt or Dale Coyne for acting as great entry points for junior drivers heading into Indycar. But one team sticks out as a perfect entry point heading into 2025, and is one that Sargeant has known previously in his career. Prema Racing. If Logan is looking for a career reboot, this is the perfect way to do it. He would be a part of a team that he once knew previously and one that represented a great period in his life and racing career. Expectations are almost non-existent as they are both new to the series so the pressure to perform would be instantly lifted. Leading a potential one car effort would also eliminate the inevitable teammate comparison. Having no one as a reference might be a disadvantage as it takes away an essential learning element of learning about the nuances of Indycar from an experienced Indycar driver. But it also has positives as there is no one for Logan to focus on beating. It would be Logan’s team and it would be Logan focusing on himself and not a teammate. It would mean Logan has his own car catered just for himself and mechanics that focus on his set up and care about his input. He would be in a team that values him and that is the important point here to make. This move would give Logan a team that cares and in motorsport, the feeling of being valued is the most important when discussing team moves. That driver and team bond is what Callum Ilott achieved at Juncos Hollinger Racing and also what Jack Harvey did at Meyer Shank Racing. Two once independent Indycar outfits that Ilott and Harvey got off the ground before becoming solid and competitive midfield runners. And all because they were a part of a team and a racing series that cares about their drivers. 

That point is something I want to really drive home. The point of value and feeling welcomed and desired. Recently at Barcelona, one of the loan cars from Williams was found poorly parked in the paddock car park against a bollard. Now this is something that is usually always ignored but David Coulthard was very quick to call it out as Logan’s car and used it to justify his poor driving standards. But it was not his car. It was Alex’s car. And Alex was not even driving it that day. It was terrible of Coulthard to even make this comment against Logan Sargeant in the first place but then it really highlights the paddocks overall view of Logan. When a driver underperforms, the vultures immediately surround them and they simply do not care why they reached that point. And when a team is reluctant to support you, the only thing that happens is a driver spiralling out of control. Williams and Formula 1 simply do not care about Logan anymore and that is visible from when he drives to when he steps out of the car. The young promising rookie has now become a laughing stock and is being made fun of wherever he turns. Memes have even spawned because of his downward turn in form with the most notable one being the “WTF is a kilometre!?”. But content like this with the intention of bruising drivers I have always seen as incredibly negative as it openly mocks the skill and intelligence of American drivers. It is only ever used when Logan crashes or qualifies last and for people to then actively support this medium and then act surprised when Logan struggles baffles me. Viewers, pundits, and fans have high expectations for a driver to succeed everywhere they race but then continue to poke fun and highly criticise them whenever they perform one act of bad driving. It is a mentality that really affects a drivers performance and one I have never seen any entertainment in. 

But the fact that of all drivers, this is happening to Logan Sargeant is crazy. I have supported him since his days in Formula 3 and to see how quickly public perception has turned on him is astonishing. The hate here is not warranted at all because as I have stated previously, Logan is a brilliant driver. He has shown speed, consistency and natural raw talent throughout his whole career and has even demonstrated flashes of speed and potential in F1. It is just an unfortunate case of Williams being in a building phase that Logan has endured nearly two extremely tough years with an underdeveloped car against a vastly more experienced teammate who Williams is building around for their future. Yet despite everything, I am still extremely happy that he did make it and that he achieved his dream of being a Formula 1 driver. The dream looked like it was shattered in 2021 but the fact that things turned around so quickly for him is an astonishing feat. He made every opportunity and every result count after his signing to the Williams Academy and he did everything perfectly to place himself in the frame for a Williams drive. His time in F1 is simply a speed bump but two years in F1 is not the be all and end all and is not what defines a drivers career. Plenty of other superstars have come and gone after a brief stint in F1 but have soldiered on to achieve amazing feats in motorsport. That is where Logan now sits and I hope that he sees himself that F1 does not want him. He now has a blank canvas right in front of him and has the potential to draw almost anything. This is only the start of his professional racing career and one that is filled with amazing potential. And I cannot wait to see where he goes next in what is only just the beginning of the journey of Logan Sargeant.   

Image Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Logan_Sargeant_Bahrain_2024.png