One of the main talking points leading up to this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix is of course Logan Sargeant’s exit from Formula 1 and his replacement Franco Colapinto joining Williams. Team principal James Vowles provided some insights into the decision making process during his press appearance on Friday, explaining why Colapinto was preferred over Liam Lawson and Mick Schumacher.
“So if we go through what options were available to us, there were sort of three options on the table which all of you sort of figured out. One was Liam Lawson, one was Mick and one was Franco. With Liam the contractual sort of position of Red Bull wouldn’t have been, wouldn’t have worked with me here at Williams. So that didn’t become an option for us in that circumstance.
“And then it’s a tough choice, it really is between Mick [and Franco]. Mick has improved a lot from where he was in Haas, there is no doubt about it. He’s a competent driver that I know he had his time, but he has done incredible work with Alpine, with Mercedes and with McLaren in the meantime. And all advocates, if you speak to them, will tell you where he’s adapted and where he’s changed. So now the decision is, do we put Mick in the car, which I think Mick would have done a good job.
“Or do we invest in an individual that’s a part of our academy, that’s done hundreds of thousands of laps in our simulator, that’s driven the car, the only driver to have driven the car this year in FP1. And on the data that we can see from what he’s doing and how he’s performing, he’s making significant steps. And so it becomes a decision, do we invest in the future or do we invest in someone else as a result of it.”
Knowing both Schumacher and Colapinto aren’t really the next Andrea Kimi Antonelli, the choice for Williams eventually came down to picking between experience or valueing their own driver academy, Vowles explained.
“I think both would fall into a category of good, not special. I think we have to be straightforward about this, Mick isn’t special, he would just have been good. I think he would have come with a lot more experience than Franco does.
“But here’s what I believe in, what Williams believes in and what’s at the core values of Williams. Williams has always invested in new generations of drivers and youth. And what I’ve been speaking about all the way through is the investment in the future of Williams.
“And the future of Williams isn’t investing in the past, it’s investing in talent that allows us to move forward as individuals. It’s investing in an academy that you’ll see announcements over the next six weeks or so, how we are filling out that academy and the amount of finance that we’re putting into it. And when you’re putting that amount of finance into academy, you’ve got to put your actions where your words are as well at the same time.”
So eventually the choice was made for their own academy talents, which Vowles admits will be a bit of a gamble, despite Colapinto being ahead of next-year’s (rumoured) rookies Oliver Bearman and Antonelli.
“I myself, 25 years ago, was junior,” Vowles reminisced to his own start in motorsports. “And someone trusted me and believed in me and invested in me. And we had good hope that came out of it. Franco’s ahead in the F2 Championship with Antonelli, he’s ahead of Bearman.
“He’s an MP, with all due respect to MP, it’s not Prema, it’s not ART. And he’s doing a good job of building up into it. Do I think we’ve put someone really in the deep end of the swimming pool? Absolutely, 100%.
“But if you listen to Franco’s own words, you’ll hear that he’s ready for it, that he’s ready for the challenge that he knows is in front of him. So, answering your question, it’s that I want to demonstrate to the world, investing in a driver, that can, I hope, become a very successful reserve driver for us, simulator driver for us, and other aspects, depending on how he performs, is investing in the future of Williams.”
The debut of Colapinto of course comes in the wake of Sargeant being let go by Williams. A difficult decision according to Vowles, as changing up the team during the season is quite disruptive, especially during a double-header.
“Well, if you speak to every TP up and down the pit lane, no one wants to change a driver mid-season. It’s horrible. It is incredibly tough on the driver, it is tough on the team, it is disruptive, to say the least.
“And so it’s a good question, ‘why change it now?’ The cleanest point to have done it would have been at the beginning of the year. Logan, first and foremost, as I said from the outset, Logan at the end of last year was starting to get within a tenth of an Alex and starting to be close. And it was good to see his progression.
And if that progression continued, we would have a driver, I think, in a very strong place this year. And it didn’t feel like the right point to cut ties and sever ties as a result of it. So the reason now is straightforward.“
Vowles does express some sympathy for the young American, who he feels has done everything within his powers, but just doesn’t have what it takes to succeed in Formula 1.
“We’ve had enough experience under our belt to know that he’s reached the limit of what he’s able to achieve. And in fact, it’s almost unfair on him furthermore, continuing to look at his face when he gets out of the car. He’s given you everything he possibly can, and it’s not enough.
“He absolutely never, from a human perspective, did anything but give me 100% of what he was able to do. But the realisation of where he is on his limits now is very clear. It’s clear to everyone.
“And more so than that, the relationship can only become more and more difficult across the last nine races towards the end of the year because he knows what his future holds, which is not to be an F1 anymore. And actually a clean break at that stage feels like the correct decision for all parties. It feels like it’s fair to Logan.
“He won’t feel that way today, but I hope he reflects on it in a future that is fair towards him in that regard. Changing also between the back-to-back races is terrible. It really is an awful thing to do, which hopefully shows you where we are in this.
“And it wasn’t, just to be very clear for everyone, it’s not just based on an accident. It was based on in the race he had all of the parts that Alex had available to him, but the performance wasn’t there. He was lacking in that area, and the gap’s almost as big as it was last year.“
The accident which Vowles refers to during last race’s third free practice saw Sargeant crashing the car in the wet, resulting in a significant fire damaging the car even further. It was however not this crash that triggered the decision, as Vowles explains he made sure he didn’t immediately react to the crash, as painful as it might have been, seeing many updates going up in flames.
“My thought process actually was… If you act emotionally and react, you’re going to make some bad decisions. So, one of the first things I did is not react to the crash.
“In fact, in many of that, I isolated myself here, because the emotion involved in taking hundreds of hours of update kits and watching it burn is pretty painful. And that’s purposely why I’m removing myself from that. It’s also purposely why the decision was taken much later on, after the race weekend.
“And I want it to be performance-based, because performance isn’t the core of everything. Accidents will happen. They will happen with Alex. They have happened with Alex. It’s not just an accident. It has to be you’re earning your place here in the sport.
And with Logan, what I wanted to do is give what I thought was sufficient time for him to demonstrate where he is on tracks that I know we can perform at. And at the point where I said earlier in the year, earlier in the year there was a responsibility on us to build a fast enough car. We did not.“
Vowles feels however that the FW46 now is a car that can compete for the points, and with that in mind the performance by Sargeant wasn’t there.
“From Zandvoort onwards, I believe we have built a car that is capable of points now. And that’s where the decision point changes. To answer your question, it comes hand-in-hand with performance of the car now being points-worthy.
“And in the case of it, it really did happen after the race on Sunday. And I dug through his data with enough detail to see where he was performance-wise, what was happening. And it wasn’t one area. There was a lack, still, of time management, a lack of pace. And where he finished was just too far back.“
