On Friday at the Red Bull Ring, Williams driver Logan Sargent accomplished something he had never done before in his Formula One career.
He finished ahead of teammate Alexander Albon in qualifying.
Albon struggled with the balance of the FW46 in both the first practice session and Friday’s F1 sprint qualifying, missing out on SQ1, but Sargent had a strong run in the first segment of qualifying to progress to SQ2.
The American driver had his time erased for exceeding track limits in Qualifying 2 and will start 15th in today’s F1 sprint race, but hailed Friday’s effort as “a good step forward” after a difficult Spanish Grand Prix.
“I had a good start in SQ1 but in SQ2 I didn’t quite get it through turns one and three and then tried to make up for it later on in the lap,” Sargent said in the team’s post-session report. “I managed to get it going but then I hit the gravel at Turn six and unfortunately had to retire. Still I’m happy with the session and I think we’re in a good position to start tomorrow. The conditions are changing from session to session.
“We’ve been working aggressively on the setup, combating the differences. I feel like we did a good job from FP1 through to sprint qualifying to turn things around, so we’ll just keep doing a little bit more of the same going forward. It was a good step forward from Barcelona.”
Williams sporting director Sven Smeets praised the efforts of the team’s second-year driver, noting that Sargent was “well placed” to produce a result today.
“Logan did a good job and made it into SQ2 with a clean and decent final push lap, where we knew he had to give it his all to move up on the grid but unfortunately he didn’t have it all together and his lap was deleted,” said Smeets. “Still, he’s in a good position tomorrow and will be fighting for his chances.”
Sargent has been in F1 for just over a year now, with just one point to his name coming at last season’s United States Grand Prix when he was promoted to 10th place after Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were disqualified post-race, but can the young driver follow up his strong performance on Friday with an even better result on Saturday?
