Logan Sargeant says he has been getting “much closer” to the level he wants to be driving at as his rookie season has progressed at Williams.
The American has yet to score a point in his first season in Formula 1, although he was one position away in 11th at Silverstone, and has seen team-mate Alex Albon impress with three top 10 results so far this year. While Sargeant admits his been an inconsistent rookie season to date, he says he has been seeing steps forward as he understands the details of where he need to improve.
“Ups and downs,” Sargeant said. “Not where I want to be, however over the last few rounds I’m much closer to where I want to be. I’ve seen really good progression as of late, and that’s the most important thing. So if I keep building on that all should be good. But definitely ups and downs, tough moments, good ones – I’ve enjoyed every moment I’ve had in the car.
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“(I’ve learned) in terms of extracting everything from the car, whether that’s in quali trim or race trim, just the way the car needs to be driven, starting to drive it like that. There’s so many different little things, but all just effectively impacts the end result, so moving towards that step by step in many different ways.”
Elaborating on the driving changes he feels he needs to make, Sargeant said there hasn’t been one glaring weakness that he’s been struggling with since stepping up to F1, but little gains across a wider area that are required.
“It’s actually very small things but the small things that make a big difference,” he said. “There were points in the year where I was simply holding the brake too late into the corners and slowing the minimum speed too much, I’ve gotten on top of that. Just inputs in high-speed corners causing instabilities, things like that, there’s countless things I can continue on.
“It’s all just very minor driving traits that needed to be adjusted – peak of brakes – a load of things just to suit he car better that didn’t really affect the balance of a car in Formula 2 and with how sensitive these cars are these small differences make quite a significant difference.”
Sargeant believes the way the Williams car improved with upgrades that he received in Austria and Silverstone ultimately helped his own situation.
“It didn’t change the way that the car is driven very much,” he said. “All it did is bring more downforce, more load, and make it slightly easier to drive, which has been nice. It didn’t change the world, it just went quicker, which is good. So in terms of a driving point of view it still required the same things, which is good and consistent for drivers as you get upgrades throughout the year, so in that sense if anything it just helped aid some of those instabilities.”