Yahoo Autos Williams sets targets for Sargeant to secure 2024 seat
Williams has set Logan Sargeant a number of “very clear targets” to hit in order to secure a seat for 2024, says team principal James Vowles.
Sargeant has had a number of high-profile crashes since the summer break that Williams says has been overshadowing progress that the rookie has made this season. Yet to score a point, Sargeant’s future is still unconfirmed for 2024 but Vowles insists the team wants the Floridian in its car next season as long as he delivers on the goals he has been set.
“Logan has very clear targets of what he has to hit before the end of the season, and we are working with him continuously,” Vowles said. “And that’s the important point — we are working with him. We want him to succeed, and we want him in the car next year.
“This is very much on us as well. We have taken someone straight from Formula 2, without any significant testing, put him a day and half in Bahrain in this car, and then wished them well on a season that has been awfully challenging for rookies.”
Vowles says there was an appreciable rise in Sargeant’s performance at Suzuka relative to teammate Alex Albon before the American’s crash in qualifying, and that Williams is a long way from running out of patience with the 22-year-old.
“There were some very positive signs to take out (from Japan),” Vowles said. “First and foremost, Logan is not on the same aerodynamic specific as Alex was. We have updates that are on Alex’s car that are not on Logan’s, due to the amount of attrition we have had this year.
“So, often when you see a performance offset it is not quite what it may seem on the timing pages. Further to that, if you look at the case of Suzuka, he did a build-up across the weekend — as he went into FP3, he did a time that matched Alex. And as we go into qualifying, until the accident he was overlaying, line-on-line, within a tenth of Alex’s performance at one of the trickiest circuits of the season.
“So, the progress is there in certain forms but very clearly being marred by a number of other issues and accidents have appeared as well. We will continue to work with Logan, and invest in Logan, as we want him to succeed as a result of the journey he is on.
“He is on a journey with us as Williams; we have a young driver program that we will continue to invest in. Only at the point where all of us come to the conclusion that we have reached the end of that road will we make any decisions, but we are nowhere near that yet.”
