Logan Sargeant recorded his best F1 qualifying result on Saturday at the Las Vegas Grand Prix and starts in P6 for the race later.
Photo Credit: Williams Racing
The signs for a good qualifying had already been there at the end of FP3 as he finished 3rd quickest, 0.081s and three places ahead of teammate Alex Albon.
He was hungry to execute a good qualifying when speaking post-race in Brazil, and he certainly achieved that at his third home race of the campaign.
“Definitely a very happy boy.
“Especially to execute over three different sessions, finally a track with potential that we’ve had, yeah, to do it here in Vegas is extra-special.
“And I think highlighted by the fact we have a great car here. It’s not easy to deliver on that performance, so the fact we were able to do that continuously throughout the whole qualifying session is awesome.”
After making it through the first two sessions in P12 and P9 respectively, the Floridian found 0.220s compared to his Q2 time to beat Bottas, Magnussen and Alonso to 7th. Sainz’s 10-place penalty means he starts 6th, alongside teammate Alex Albon on the third row.
Sargeant admitted the track came to them as the sessions went on as they maximised their package on the day.
“When we showed up today and the track really started to grip up, it started to come more and more towards our car. And to be honest, it’s becoming more and more fun to drive every session as the grip is coming.
“I don’t think we could have done a whole lot more today. I think we extracted everything very well. And most importantly, we have two cars at the front of the grid to try and keep there. So just hats off to everyone in the team. Everyone’s worked hard, knew this weekend was a good opportunity and we’re off to the right start.”
Something Sargeant has struggled with in his rookie season is overdriving too much at times in qualifying. However, thanks to the nature of this circuit and how much it suits the FW45, he could be under the limit early on and then get to the maximum performance by Q3.
“[It] just let me not have to put it so on the limit in Q1 and risk a mistake. So that was nice, I could really build through the session and just leave myself in a good spot to really put a good lap in every time.”
With Williams extremely slippery in a straight-line and trying to extend their 7-point gap over AlphaTauri heading into Abu Dhabi for P7 in the Constructors’ Championship, Sargeant is hopeful they can have both cars in the points.
“We’ve had great race pace the past three or four races and [we will] try to keep that up, see what we can do tomorrow. [We] want to continue this and have a great day tomorrow.
“I think we have a very annoying car down the straights for others so we’ll try and use that to our advantage.”
