After months of giving Logan Sargeant the good thing about the doubt, a costly crash at Zandvoort finally prompted Williams to exchange him with teen Franco Colapinto. How justified is Williams’ decision and is the young Argentine the precise alternative?
Was Williams right to fireside Sargeant?
His position at Williams has been uncertain for a while but when Sargeant returned to Zandvoort to start out the second half of the season it appeared the American would complete his second F1 campaign before being replaced by Ferrari exiled Carlos Sainz in 2025.
But a serious crash during a rain-soaked FP3 that destroyed almost every corner of the automobile, together with much-needed upgrades, proved to be the ultimate straw for Williams after a frustratingly unstable 12 months and a half with the team.
The incontrovertible fact that Sargeant lasted only one race within the second half of the season, while Williams had the complete summer to search out a alternative, shows that team boss James Vowles hurried to search out a alternative after one other costly and completely unnecessary incident when Sargeant dropped a wheel on the wet grass at Turn 4 at Zandvoort during a pointless rehearsal.
His crash was much like the one he suffered in FP1 on the Japanese Grand Prix, where he also had a wheel land on the grass and had a serious accident.
The common saying when F1 teams approach inexperienced drivers is that it's OK to make a mistake once. Just don't make the identical mistake again. Unfortunately for Sargeant, he made too many.
Logan Sargeant, Williams FW46, jumps out of his automobile after a crash
Photo: Simon Galloway / Motorsports images
It got here as a little bit of a surprise that Vowles had given him a second 12 months of university after he struggled to adapt to the tough realities of Formula One last 12 months. His tendency to overspeed within the automobile meant he was unable to secure a stable race weekend and begin from a better position.
But Williams saw the potential that when he wasn’t doing that, the speed was there and he could get much closer to the pace of his team-mate Alex Albon, something he had done a couple of times before. After all, Sargeant had been near Oscar Piastri once they were team-mates in F3, so there was a driver in there somewhere who was greater than capable.
However, such situations didn’t come often enough and while Sargeant had a difficult begin to the season, falling behind Albon in several races, the Zandvoort crash shows why it could have been a wise move for a team running out of spare parts.
In his media interactions, Sargeant was clearly frustrated by this lack of equal treatment, the hype surrounding his lack of results and his potential successor, who would eventually be Sainz. Being parked in Melbourne because Albon crashed in practice and Williams had no spare automobile will need to have been particularly demotivating.
But once he was given the identical parts, he continued to lose out in qualifying and races to his more experienced team-mate, ending the season with a 14-2 qualifying record and only one point to his name finally 12 months's US Grand Prix.
Significant changes to Williams’ line-up at Zandvoort are a part of the equation, as after a difficult begin to the season with a very heavy automobile, the team believes it can finally have more points-scoring opportunities and wishes two drivers who can deliver those opportunities.
Vowles and his team are focused on 2026 and beyond, but currently sit ninth with just 4 points and are determined to vary that in any respect costs.
“Changing our driver mid-season is not a decision we have taken lightly, but we believe it gives Williams the best chance of challenging for points throughout the rest of the season,” Vowles said in an announcement accompanying the news.
“We have just made a major upgrade to the car and we need to make the most of every opportunity to score points in what will be an incredibly tight midfield battle.”
Franco Colapinto from Williams Academy
Photo: Williams
Is rookie Colapinto an acceptable alternative for Schumacher or Lawson?
That need for a quick, stable arm alongside Albon who can immediately challenge for points makes Franco Colapinto an enigmatic successor at first glance, having ditched the 23-year-old for a 21-year-old rookie who has just one rehearsal under his belt on the British Grand Prix, following the rookie’s test in Abu Dhabi.
Asked by Motorsport.com about Colapinto’s FP1 run on the time, Vowles said: “It was a reward for a really strong Formula 2 season. I wish to see that we’ve a robust programme for young drivers.
“I believe you possibly can really burn a driver out in case you put them within the automobile too early. And actually in Formula 1 today you see rookies struggling due to various things.
“Basically our investment, our commitment to them has to be the amount of time spent in the historic car, the amount of time spent preparing to make sure that if we select them to continue, they are basically in the strongest position they can be in. And we haven’t given Franco that at this point.”
The query stays whether Colapinto is in the most effective position to make his Formula 1 debut, even when by all accounts he did a solid job at Silverstone and made a mature impression in his media dealings.
The Argentine knows he has nothing to lose, because the seat he slides into won’t be his to maintain in 2025, no matter how well he does. But beyond shining a lightweight on his own academy programme, Williams must clearly like what he’s seen in each the F1 and F2 cars.
Williams also didn't have much selection, with Mercedes reserve and Alpine WEC driver Mick Schumacher and Red Bull reserve Liam Lawson all considered for last weekend's race.
Some, like Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, imagine F1 hasn’t seen the actual Mick after two difficult seasons with the struggling Haas team, while others argue Schumacher has had his probability, unlike, say, F2 champion Felipe Drugovich. And given the variety of accidents which have marked the German’s time in F1, Williams could have been delay by replacing one unpredictable driver with one other.
Lawson could be the most obvious selection, given his impressive and mature performance as a alternative for the injured Daniel Ricciardo at AlphaTauri last 12 months. With Red Bull seemingly committed to giving the New Zealander a spot on the grid next 12 months, each inside and out of doors the Red Bull family, giving Lawson one other nine races could be ideal preparation, even when he has already shown he can jump in on the deep end and provides it his all.
But Lawson’s position as Red Bull’s reserve driver in all 4 positions across the 2 teams appears to be the deciding factor. “It would depend on the conditions and whether we needed him back, that we could get him back quite quickly,” Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said on Sunday. “But if they needed a driver next weekend, we would certainly be open to that.”
Given Williams’ deal with consistency and ends in the last nine races, the prospect of getting to quickly swap Lawson to Red Bull when any of the 4 drivers were unavailable could have proved too great a risk.
His daring decision to sign the unproven Colapinto can be a risk, and only time will tell how that pans out. But while continuing with Sargeant was a dead end, at the very least he’ll have the potential upside of further developing a homegrown talent who could turn into a very good prospect for the long run.
