The first home race for Logan Sargeant in 2023 did not go particularly great for him. Located close to where he grew up, the 22-year-old qualified and finished last at the Miami Grand Prix as a difficult spell continued.
Photo credit: Williams Racing
Although he was only 0.344s away from Albon in Q1, Sargeant ended up in 20th as the Thai progressed to Q2.
In the race, his day was compromised immediately as he made contact with Lance Stroll on the opening lap and broke his front wing endplate. No Safety Cars meant he never got back to the pack following the unscheduled stop to change his front wing.
Williams team principal James Vowles talked about it in the ‘Vowles verdict’.
“Miami may look like a normal track in many regards, it is, but actually certain areas are very, very narrow. It was in these narrow sections on the first lap of the race that Logan clipped his front wing against the Aston Martin and broke the endplate,” he explained.
“[With] the front wing now broken, we had to pit Logan and replace the front wing and put him back out again, but it put him dead last and quite a bit away from the remainder of the field.
“In that circumstance, typically what you’re waiting for is a Safety Car which will close the field back up again and allow Logan to really get back into the fight. At a track like Miami, especially given everything that happened in free practice and in qualifying, you would have expected that sort of circumstance to come towards us, but it didn’t.”
However, Vowles did see an upside to the unfortunate situation for Sargeant.
Throughout the first few races of his time in F1 to date, Sargeant has been involved in quite a few close battles.
In Miami, he was able to run in clean air for over 50 laps as the early stop left him on his own at the back for the rest of the race.
Vowles believes this experience will be invaluable as Sargeant got to play around with various tools and settings available to him in the car. The American also learned how the FW45 performed and handled in clean air on high fuel.
“Ultimately for Logan, great experience being able to run the car in free air, something that normally he won’t be able to experience and got good mileage under his belt, but he wasn’t able to get back into the fight for points,” added Vowles.
“That ability to run 50-odd laps by yourself in free air and experiment with your tools and systems and find performance is invaluable. You just simply won’t have the opportunity to do that normally within the season. It gave him a chance to really explore the boundaries of the car.”
The pace shown by the Floridian pleased his boss.
“His performance whilst doing that was quick. He was as quick as the pack that Alex was running in. He was just running by himself quite a few seconds behind that.”
