Logan Sargeant made an excellent start to life as a Formula One driver as he finished P12 in the Bahrain Grand Prix. Although he was lapped in the closing stages by race leader Max Verstappen, the American was within 10s of Williams teammate Alex Albon at the end on Sunday.
The 22-year-old was understandably feeling upbeat after the performance he and his team put in.
“For my first race, I feel like everything operationally from race start to pit stops, VSCs, everything went smoothly and I’m really happy with the pace that me and Alex had today. I think the team’s done an amazing job all weekend just unlocking that pace.
“We probably didn’t expect where we were now compared to the test and that’s just a massive testament to the work that the team has done and I’m super proud of everyone.”
The Floridian showed his opportunism on the opening lap as he made superb overtakes around the outside on Yuki Tsunoda and Nico Hulkenberg in turns 4 and 9 respectively.
“Yeah, I just looked for the gaps and tried to fill them,” stated Sargeant on his first lap. “I didn’t ask for too much but it just fell my way. I really enjoyed it, I loved every second of it. I love the on-track battles and it was super fun.”
Sargeant believes his showing was massively positive, but he is fully aware tougher challenges and days will come in the future.
“I’ve learned a lot. I’ve shown myself that I am capable to race against these guys at a high level and that’s massively positive. But I still expect difficulties along the way.
“I know how difficult it is to keep performing at that level, especially going to a few tracks now that I don’t know very well. So it’s going to be important to keep prepping well, keep working hard and keep me on that upward trajectory.”
The Bahrain International Circuit is known to be one of the hardest circuits on tyres across the course of an F1 season. Sargeant admitted the scale of the tyre degradation caught people out, though.
“To be honest I don’t think they expected this much tyre deg coming into the year and it almost felt a little bit like F2 in terms of deg. So that sort of felt like I was just carrying over what I did last year — trying to protect the rears and maintain pace.”
Photo: Williams Racing
