Sargeant has six races left with which to secure his place on the F1 grid, and despite the public show of faith from team principal James Vowles, it’s obvious that he’ll have to improve his performance relative to team-mate Alex Albon while staying clear of trouble.
Inevitably the knowledge that the clock is ticking will only pile on the pressure in the coming weeks, especially when he races in front of his home crowd in Austin and Las Vegas. It’s a daunting task for the 22-year-old.
When a team signs a rookie it knows that it is going to pay a price as the newcomer makes his way along the inevitable learning curve. Even Oscar Piastri, currently enjoying the best F1 debut season in many years, hit the wall in Montreal and Zandvoort.
Unfortunately for Sargeant his run of rookie year incidents has been way above the norm, and frustratingly for all concerned, it’s continued well into the second half of the season.
Just consider the four races since the summer break. He did a good job in Zandvoort only to crash heavily in Q3, and he then went off again in the race, albeit in an incident prompted by a hydraulic glitch triggered by a kerb.
After a clean weekend at Monza, he crashed in the race in Singapore, although he managed to get going again. Then at Suzuka after showing decent pace in practice he had another huge off in qualifying, which triggered a chassis change and a pitlane start. In the race, he slid into Valtteri Bottas, which led to a penalty and an early retirement due to a broken floor.
That run combined with incidents earlier in the year adds up to a lot of very expensive damage that has impacted the flow of new parts to the track. In addition, Sargeant has not yet contributed to the team’s points total, with Albon having scored all 21 so far.
Source: Autosport