F1 News
Sargeant: 'Something to think about for the next races'
- GPblog.com
After the first race in Bahrain, Logan Sargeant looks back on his first race for Williams. The rookie, who finished fourth in Formula 2 last year, made a good impression at the Bahrain circuit. Already during the test days with the new cars, he drove a whopping 229 laps. On Saturday, he managed to put his FW45 just short of Lando Norris in the McLaren.
Mental approach
On Saturday, the American qualified in 16th place in his attempt to reach his first-ever Q2. Lando Norris had driven the same time earlier, making his time good enough for 15th place.
Sargeant, therefore, had to settle for the sixteenth starting spot: "I feel like I didn’t quite have the right approach going into qualifying. Our car was good enough to make Q2. At the time, I didn’t know that was the case, so I went in a little bit more aggressively than I should have.
"I pushed a little bit too much, especially on the first lap, which didn’t give me as good a reference for the second lap when I really needed to do it. That’s a mental approach I need to shift a little bit. At least it gives me something to reflect on heading into the next races."
Determined debut
On Sunday, Sargeant had a good race start, driving to a respectable 12th place in 57 laps. The American himself is satisfied: "I loved every single second of my first F1 race weekend. If you had given me that sort of weekend before it happened, I would have said yes to it. To have a smooth race, from the pit stops to the Virtual Safety Car, and finish 12th gives me a good baseline to work with."
After Bahrain, Sargeant had some time to recover in his home environment. On Tuesday, the Fort Lauderdale-based driver will fly to Jeddah, where the second race of the season will take place on Sunday, March 19.