Logan Sargeant aims to shine in F1 Miami GP —his first car race in home nation

The sport now has a much higher profile Stateside, and there’s increased media interest. Sargeant will be flat out on PR duties this week. As with McLaren and Oscar Piastri on home ground in Melbourne, his Williams team will have to try to keep him in a bubble.

“We’re starting media on a Wednesday in Miami,” he says. “So it is pretty early. And I think it’s going to be about managing myself throughout Wednesday and Thursday to make sure I have the energy on Friday to be fully mentally charged.

“I think I’m understanding how to just go with the flow a little bit better and not letting it mentally drain me. It’s part of the experience, and another good challenge for me.”

A challenge is what the season thus far has been for the youngster. After a solid start in Bahrain, helped by the previous week’s testing, life has become harder.

He had a heavy crash in Q1 at the second race in Jeddah, and then a decent weekend in Australia was spoiled when he ran into the back of fellow rookie Nyck de Vries at the final restart, putting both men out of the race, albeit without earning any penalty.

Then at Baku last weekend he had another massive shunt, this time in the first part of Saturday’s shootout qualifying session for the later sprint event.

In normal qualifying with the race on Sunday there would have been time to fix the car, but Williams had no choice but to withdraw Sargeant from the sprint, due to the short gap.

The biggest frustration for Sargeant and his team was that at the time of the shunt he was in a respectable 11th place, and looking like he had a good chance of progressing through to the second part.

Of course rookies are expected to make mistakes but three mishaps in three weekends is hardly ideal, especially for a team that, while better-off than it was a few years ago, still has to watch the pennies – and like everyone else stay inside the cost cap.

Sargeant knows he needs to do better, and even before he took to the track in Baku he admitted that on occasion he has been pushing too hard.

“I think it’s just been a case of at times wanting a little bit too much,” he noted. “And going forward a little bit more than is necessary. I think throughout this year, we’ve had quite clear pace to make Q2.

“And I maybe tried to stretch myself a little bit further than what was necessary to reach that next stage. So it’s just about dialling it back a little bit, and just making sure the laps are a bit cleaner and done a bit nicer.

“I personally know that the pace is there. And the pace is the last thing that concerns me. So it’s simply about putting it together better.”

The fact that there have been signs of real promise Sargeant makes his recent incidents doubly disappointing for team and driver.

“It’s definitely has been a little bit frustrating to have not put it together,” he says. “We have had the pace to go to Q2 in every round, and it hasn’t happened.

“That has to be the goal, to be able to put it together better, and find myself in a better position at the end of quali. That ultimately changes your entire strategy and the way you look at the races.”

So why hasn’t it been working out for him?

“I think it’s really close,” he says. “It’s fine details. I don’t want to go into too much detail, because there’s a lot of them, but it’s been right there at the edge of my fingertips, and it’s just falling away from me. So it’s all there.

“I think it’s a slight mental approach thing. It’s easy to be too aggressive, it’s easy to be too conservative. So it’s a very fine line. I’m just trying to find that that sweet spot.

“If I’m being honest, it doesn’t concern me, because I’ve shown myself throughout my career that I can qualify a car. So it’s just about getting into that right, I guess, mental space to go out and get the job done.”

To be fair circumstances haven’t helped. This year’s calendar is front-loaded with difficult street or temporary venues, including several that Sargeant wasn’t able to sample in his single season of F2. Miami is another track where there’s little margin for error, and Monaco is only a few weeks away.

He knew Baku from F2, but references are very different in F1, and the fact that it became a sprint weekend – with only FP1 to do any homework – meant that he had no chance to build-up speed through the weekend. De Vries was also caught out with a big crash, although the third 2023 rookie, Piastri, continued to make good progress.

“It definitely makes a difference, I think,” says Sargeant of the tricky schedule. “It’s difficult going to tracks you don’t know extremely well.”

The good news for Sargeant is that his team knows how tough the run of races has been, so he been given some margin.

“It’s a pretty tough start,” Williams head of vehicle performance Dave Robson said after the qualifying shunt in Baku. “Well I suppose a relatively easy start in Bahrain, because he knows it reasonably well. And we did the test there. Saudi is tough, Melbourne was new to him.

“We’re always expected to perform no matter where we are”

“And then you come here, and although he knows the circuit, it’s quite a different thing in an F1 car. Plus, the resurfacing. And then the whole change of format winds up the pressure.

“The really frustrating thing is that he was actually putting together a really good lap. And he was quick all through qualifying yesterday. So yeah, it’s a shame. But it’s all good learning, isn’t it?”

So did Robson have to put his arm around Sargeant’s shoulder and offer some words of comfort?

“A little bit, but I don’t think he really needs it,” he noted. “He knows it’s not easy. And the pace of the car means as well, when you’re in it, you can’t do anything sort of half-heartedly, can you?

“If you’re going to be in it, you’ve got to push it, because otherwise we’re not quick enough to kind of relax a bit and still get something worthwhile. So he knows it’s all part of the game and it’s part of the learning experience.”

As Robson implies Sargeant is not short of confidence, and he’s also not the sort of guy to fold under pressure. Ahead of Baku he made no excuses about the new format being tough – one practice session is what we had in F2, he pointed out, “and I get to do two starts”. Glass half full, in other words.

The bottom line is that the promise is certainly there, and once he builds up a bit of momentum Sargeant will be worth watching.

Let’s hope for his sake that he can make it through a hectic week at Miami with no further mishaps, as a good result at home will surely be a big boost.

“We’re in F1, the pressure is always there from the team,” he says. “We’re always expected to perform no matter where we are. So I think it’s really the same situation no matter what track we’re at.”