Williams team boss James Vowles highlighted the importance for Logan Sargeant to deliver good results this year, but the Briton denied the American is at risk of losing his seat in F1 if he fails to impress in the early part of the season.
Despite a challenging debut campaign in F1 with Williams in 2023, the British outfit continued to show faith in Sargeant’s potential by retaining him for 2024.
Last year, the 23-year-old faced a steep learning curve which he approached with perhaps a lack of discipline in the first part of the season that led to several mistakes and crashes.
Furthermore, Williams’ undisputed team leader Alex Albon had a clean sweep of all 22 qualifying sessions over Sargeant - the only whitewash among team mates on this year's grid.
However, Williams seems to be taking a long-term view with Sargeant, which implies that the Grove-based outfit sees a raw talent that warrants nurturing, or they believe his struggles in 2023 were part of an inevitable rookie learning experience.
Regardless, the pressure to deliver immediate results appears to be off, allowing the young gun the space to develop and improve throughout the 2024 season.
“It's important to him to get good results,” Vowles told the media in Jeddah last weekend. “The only thing I would say is it's not the early-on bit.
“What we have to see from him is progress as we continue on. Early on implies that there's a risk if he's not performing after three races that something will happen, and that's simply not the case.”
At F1’s season opening race in Bahrain, Sargeant qualified P18, five spots behind Albon, and finished 20th, while in Jeddah, he lined up 19th on the grid – seven places behind his teammate – and concluded his evening P14.
Vowles stressed that Sargeant no longer has the excuse of inexperience to fall back on this season.
“In the case of Logan, he knows that he finished last year starting to build on what he had as an experience base, and he's coming back here not as a rookie now, but someone that has years of experience behind him.
“He's got to build on that without mistakes, without error, and continually move forward.”
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