Despite failing to set a time in qualifying, Logan Sargeant was allowed to start along with the other 19 drivers on the Mexican Grand Prix as he was easily inside 107% during practice.
Photo credit: Williams Racing
Sargeant’s awful qualifying experience began in the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez when his only lap of the session was wiped out due to a track limitation breach in Q1.
As he overtook Yuki Tsunoda in a yellow flag zone following Alonso’s spin, the Floridian was penalised 10 places.
Sargeant put up a strong effort on Sunday, but while 12th, he had to take his car into the pits to retire on the penultimate lap due to a fuel pump issue, dropping him to 16th place.
Even though it was such a painful ending, he could still take positives from the day.
“It was another strong Sunday from my side. The pace was once again good, and I had some good moves.
“We were managing an issue through the whole race and came up one lap short.
“We had a fuel pump issue — we had the correct amount of fuel in the car but we had an issue with the pump to get it out of the tank.Yeah, disappointing.
“We did our best to manage it and the team helped guide me through it.”
The American dropped from P15 to P18 on the second start but managed to overtake Alonso, Zhou, Bottas and Hülkenberg after that to run in P12 before his unfortunate retirement.
“I had a poor second restart which cost me from being in the top 10. Points were on the table.
“Disappointing to not finish after giving everything I had after 71 laps but there are plenty of positives to takeaway and I’m happy with myself.”
The 22-year-old believes he is continuing to make progress throughout his rookie season and believes he had extremely strong race pace again.
“This is a tough track to come to — it’s really unique.
“By qualifying, I felt like I was there. I had what I needed. It just fell away from us on that second run with the yellow flags and the traffic.
“I think today again we showed we had the race pace. We came through and we put in good moves. Executed as well as we could have.”
In response to a question regarding his thoughts about the upcoming Brazilian Grand Prix, Sargeant said:
“I feel good. Two strong Sundays on the bounce.
“I had a really good opportunity yesterday that was unfortunately [ruined by] traffic chaos. We should have cruised through to Q2.
“So we didn’t to catch a break in qualifying because that could change the entire weekend of course. And I think if we do that, we keep these strong Sundays up, things will look a lot better.”
He added on the race at Interlagos: “It’s an amazing track. It’s going to be a special weekend of course from my side.
“I just want to keep up the progress, keep pushing as hard as I can, and I really think if we can have a couple breakthroughs in qualifying, the race pace is pretty much where it needs to be.”
