When I published Elizabeth Blackstock‘s phenomenal blog, “Why Is It So Hard For America To Produce a Decent Formula 1 Driver,” this morning, I knew it would cause a bit of a stir. But I certainly didn’t think there’d be a major story development soon. Alas, here we are two hours later, and the subject of said blog—American racing driver Logan Sargeant—is no longer employed by the Williams Formula 1 team.
You know what this means: America’s minimal and admittedly mediocre presence in F1 has been reduced to almost nothing now. Sure, there are three U.S. races on the calendar and Haas F1 is technically American, but I’m not sure that consoles me or anyone else much.
Williams announced Tuesday afternoon that its academy and F2 racing driver Franco Colapinto will replace Sargeant effective immediately and for the remainder of the 2024 season. Not much was said about Sargeant in the team’s press release—just the usual lingo about thanking him for everything he’s done for the team and that he’ll always be part of the Williams family. Right.
As Blackstock mentioned in her story, Sargeant has been good enough throughout his racing career to open the door to several big opportunities. The biggest one is his seat at Williams, of course. He’s won on the karting world stage, as well as in various regional championships like Formula 4 UAE, British F4, Formula 3, and perhaps in the toughest series of them all, F2.
It’s obvious by now that his F1 career didn’t go as planned. The learning curve was too steep, he crashed too often and failed to challenge his more established teammate Alex Albon, who admittedly isn’t doing great either because he’s also driving a Williams. Only so much can be done.
It stinks for U.S. fans, even if many of them didn’t know who Sargeant was and rooted for the usual Red Bull, Ferrari, and McLaren drivers instead. Who knows how long it’ll be until we see another American flag on the side of an F1 car.
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