Things aren’t looking good for American Formula 1 driver Logan Sargeant. The Williams racer hasn’t scored points in a race since picking up his first point at last year’s U.S. Grand Prix in Austin and topped the list of Formula 1 crashes in his first year. Now, Sargeant is being forced to step aside and let his teammate race his car after a massive crash during practice for the Australian Grand Prix.
During the second practice session in Melbourne for the 2024 Australian Grand Prix, Williams F1 driver Alex Albon sustained a massive crash that practically wrote off his car. The Thai driver failed to set a time in the session and inspections of his car following FP2 revealed that the chassis was so damaged it wouldn’t be able to run over the rest of the weekend.
Usually in this scenario, teams would have a spare chassis on hand to build up ahead of qualifying. However, Williams team boss James Vowles said a spare unit was not available this weekend.
“It’s unacceptable in modern day Formula 1 not to have a spare chassis,” Vowels said in a statement shared by the team. “But it is a reflection of how behind we were in the winter period and an illustration of why we need to go through significant change in order to get ourselves in a better position for the future.”
Rather than telling Albon to sit out following his crash, Williams has made the decision to pull Sargeant out of his car and hand the metaphorical keys over the his team mate. As such, the American racer will sit out the Australian Grand Prix while Albon will be free to race.
“This is the hardest moment I can remember in my career and it’s absolutely not easy,” said Sargeant. “I am however completely here for the team and will continue to contribute in any way that I can this weekend to maximize what we can do.”
The move shows exactly where Williams puts its faith in the team. And there’s good reason for their support of Albon over Sargeant, as the Thai driver picked up 27 world championship points in 2023 versus Sargeant one. On top of that, practice one in Melbourne revealed the American was almost a tenth of a second slower than Albon.
What’s more, the American driver is estimated to have cost Williams an eye-watering $4.33 million as a result of damage sustained to his cars through 2023, reports Sports Illustrated.
This rocky start to Sargeant’s sophomore year in F1 comes as doubt swirls around Williams’ driver lineup in 2025. While Albon has a contract with Williams until the end of 2025, and the team has made no secret of its desire to keep the Thai driver, Sargeant isn’t in the same position. Instead, his contract with the team runs out at the end of this year, and he has yet to really prove that he belongs to stay in the seat going forward.