Jolyon Palmer can only question why Williams re-signed Logan Sargeant for the 2024 season after showing they have ‘little confidence’ in their driver at the Australian GP.
The Grove squad left it late before announcing that Sargeant had signed a second, one-year contract in December. He was the final driver to secure a spot on the 2024 grid after a tough rookie term. Williams are also yet to see the decision to keep the 23-year-old pay dividends.
Sargeant only scored one fortuitous point through his debut campaign in Formula 1 last year at the United States GP. The Fort Lauderdale, Florida native crept into P10 at COTA when the stewards disqualified Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc over excessive wear to their floors.
Williams sidelined Logan Sargeant at the Australian GP to favour Alex Albon
Teammate Alex Albon also completely dominated Sargeant in their head-to-head contests at Williams last season. The 28-year-old earned 27 of their 28 points for P7 in the constructors’ championship. Albon even beat Sargeant 22-0 in qualifying and 19-3 in Grand Prix in 2023.
Albon’s dominance also extended to taking 6-0 records in Sprints and Sprint Shootouts last year. He has started by out-qualifying and out-finishing the American at the Bahrain GP and the Saudi Arabian GP in 2024, too. But Sargeant could not try to reply at the Australian GP.
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Williams withdrew Sargeant from the Australian GP after FP2 to give Albon his chassis as the London-born Thai had destroyed his in FP1. Albon put a hole in his chassis, split his gearbox in half and damaged his engine after taking too much kerb at Turn 7 before striking the wall.
Team principal James Vowles reluctantly gave Sargeant’s chassis to Albon given Williams do not have a spare. Issues developing the FW46 over the winter meant the team have not had time to build another – and will not whilst repairing Albon’s chassis before the Japanese GP.
Jolyon Palmer now questions why James Vowles re-signed Logan Sargeant
Vowles felt Albon represented Williams’ best chance for scoring their first point this season in Melbourne. But the former Red Bull driver came home in P11 for the second race running. Now, Palmer can only question why Williams re-signed Sargeant if they still do not trust him.
“I think for a debatable upside, the damage on the other side of the garage was greater than any potential gain,” he told the F1 website. “Would Albon have been the stronger driver for the weekend? Logically, yes, given his form over last season and this compared to Sargeant.
“But he did miss out on 34 laps on Friday compared to his teammate – the equivalent to a-session-and-a-half. He also did no Friday qualifying simulation runs or race running, unlike Logan. If Vowles still thinks Albon would have been stronger despite that, then it begs the question: Why did they re-sign Sargeant for 2024 if they have such little confidence in him?
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“For the sake of the potential of sneaking a point, it might have been better to keep Logan in his own car, hope to gain a point anyway with a driver that you’ve been publicly backing and not create all of these question marks and damage the morale of their second driver. It must be a very tough pill for Sergeant to swallow – after all, he wasn’t the one that crashed.”
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