In the round-up: James Vowles expects Logan Sargeant to prove his critics wrong in 2024.
In brief
Sargeant must be “surprise of the season”
Williams team principal James Vowles says second-year driver Logan Sargeant needs to be the “surprise of the season” after a challenging rookie year in 2023, in which he scored just one of the team’s 28 points.
“He knows that what he was doing last year, that’s not fit for purpose anymore,” Vowles said to the official F1 channel.
“We have to step it up. He has to be the surprise of the season and use the knowledge base that he spent 12 months gathering to good effect. You can see that in his body language and confidence already and he’s now got an opportunity to take it to the track and translate it there.”
No fooling new team boss – Hulkenberg
Haas driver Nico Hulkenberg says that new team principal Ayao Komatsu, the team’s former engineering director, will not be easily fooled by the team’s engineers.“Obviously he has his own management style and he’s made some changes already,” Hulkenberg said.
“He’s obviously an engineer, so a different background, but a lot of know-how, a lot of knowledge. The engineers can’t fool him because he knows what’s up and how the dynamics work.”
Hamda Al Qubaisi aiming for F1 Academy title
Red Bull junior Hamda Al Qubaisi says her target is to win the F1 Academy championship in her second season.
The MP Motorsport driver – the younger of the two Al Qubaisi sisters who race in the series this year – will run in Red Bull Racing’s colours this season. She took four race wins last year on her way to third in the standings, but is aiming to win the title this season.
“We ended off the season last year really well, so I’m really excited to bring what I’ve learned from last year into this year and improve even more,” she said.
“I think we always want to strive to do better. Last year, I felt like I had more in me. Also, I look back and think I could have performed even better, so I’m going into this year with that mindset and trying to aim for the title.”
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Links
Motor racing links of interest:
Piastri: Meet the hottest star of ‘Formula 1: Drive to Survive’ (The Daily Beast)
'Even if the 2024 car is as speedy as Piastri hopes, he’s aware that every driver’s chances of losing are far better than their chances of winning. He’s sanguine about it, though, drawing wisdom from F1 legend Niki Lauda, who found losing more useful than winning, because of what it taught him for future races. Piastri knows failure is ''inevitable in motorsport,'' in part because ''there are so many factors outside of your control,'' including the widely varying race circuits, weather, and unforeseen mechanical issues. Loss is an opportunity to ''learn how deep you can dig to find more performance. You find out about yourself, because it puts your emotions and motivation to the test.'''
Steiner joins Australian F1 TV team (Speedcafe)
'Former Haas F1 boss Guenther Steiner will join the Network 10 broadcasting team for the Australian Grand Prix next month. He was replaced as team principal at Haas at the end of last season but is poised to return to F1 next weekend as part of Germany's RTL broadcast in Bahrain. It will mark his first paddock appearance since leaving Haas and comes as a precursor to his role in front of the camera with Network 10.'
'Prepared to take every measure possible': IMS upset over F1's trademark infringements (Indy Star)
'Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Doug Boles has once again been forced to dig into his law background to defend one of the Speedway’s most precious trademarks – one that has been twice infringed upon by IndyCar’s two primary US racing competitors in the last week. The latest caps a trio of seemingly blatant instances over the last year of Formula 1 and Liberty Media flirting dangerously close with the five-word phrase that is so thoroughly ingrained in the pageantry of the Indianapolis 500 – and which was first trademarked by Hulman and Company in 1986: 'The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.''
Q&A: Roger Penske on Detroit's renaissance, NFL Draft, EV adoption and Le Mans (Detroit News)
'This past year the (Detroit Grand Prix) downtown with 150,000 people — half of them able to come for free. We had 80 companies around Detroit that supported the race, and $100 million worth of economic benefit for the city, which is just amazing.'
Back At Base: Episode 7 - The Bombshell (BBC Sounds)
A BBC Radio 5 Live documentary series captures the moment Mercedes factory staff in Brackley were informed by Toto Wolff that Lewis Hamilton would leave the team at the end of the 2024 season.
In conversation with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri (McLaren via YouTube)
The McLaren team mates have a light-hearted discussion ahead of the start of the new season about the team's new livery, pre-season nerves and beards.
Williams Racing Driver Academy pre-season training (Williams via YouTube)
'Zak O'Sullivan, Franco Colapinto, Luke Browning, Lia Block and Alessandro Giusti spent two days gathering data to understand exactly where they are before their campaigns begin.'
We always endeavour to credit original sources. If you have a tip for a link relating to single-seater motorsport to feature in the next RaceFans round-up please send it to us via the contact form.
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Social media
Notable posts from X (formerly Twitter), TikTok and more:
New season, new helmet @PierreGASLY ✨ pic.twitter.com/UyH9A6FxNP
— BWT Alpine F1 Team (@AlpineF1Team) February 25, 2024
Now I know how jetpack man feels https://t.co/hkr7LJVMK7
— Oscar Piastri (@OscarPiastri) February 25, 2024
The team nailed those practice stops on Friday 💪#HaasF1 #F1Testing pic.twitter.com/53qMlpGWqc
— MoneyGram Haas F1 Team (@HaasF1Team) February 25, 2024
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- Find more official F1 accounts to follow in the F1 Twitter Directory
Comment of the day
This weekend’s Caption Competition winner is Philip!:
Hulkenberg’s excitement was short lived when Toto apologised for calling the wrong Nico…
Philip
Thanks to everyone who came up with caption ideas this week and special mentions to Biggsy, Nulla Pax and Red Andy who all came up with particularly good captions.
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Madbikerbob and Mitzi !
EffWunFan (@cairnsfella)
26th February 2024, 0:16
Sargeant WON’T BE “the surprise of the season” – EffWunFan
Jay
26th February 2024, 1:08
I’ll be surprised if he makes it thru the whole season! I was rooting for him last year, even defended him when he quit in Qatar.
I hope I’m wrong but I won’t be holding my breath.
An Sionnach
26th February 2024, 12:51
If you have a mileage and testing problem, that’s tough. Still, there are only so many places. I’d like to see 24 cars on the grid and more testing. In the absence of this, only those who can jump straight in will succeed and novices will often struggle against old hands, or even just themselves.
Logan seems like a nice guy. There are a few of them in F1 currently. I have concerns for even the most talented of them. I like Max and Alonso, and Lewis is also a huge talent. I’m not sure any of them could be simply described as nice guys, though!
Which F1 champions didn’t have an edge or some amount of heavy mental armour where they would be absolutely clinical when push came to shove? Even Prost and Lauda had some kind of aura about them. Whatever your self doubt, it probably helps you competitively if your opponents don’t see it.
Jay
26th February 2024, 23:13
Lack of testing is a problem but I don’t buy that excuse for Sargeant. Albon demolished him last year (27-1 points). That’s worse than Latifi got beat and people ripped on Latifi big time!
I don’t hate Sargeant, but he might be more suited in Indycar.
Nick T.
27th February 2024, 6:12
I like the kid, but he’s had an entire season. Every F1 superstar was great right out of the box. Meanwhile, he couldn’t beat Albon once. He’s certainly helped inflate Alex’s stock though.
Tristan
26th February 2024, 2:45
This was so fascinating to watch in Drive to Survive… They certainly portrayed Steiner as somebody entirely out of his depth, being given the run around and more than happy to give up.
I wonder why he didn’t give Komatsu more trust. He could have said you have final say on the car, I’ll do the rest… Komatsu shouldn’t have to run the entire team just to lead the car development where he wants.
It speaks to what was a bigger problem at HAAS.
Elvira
26th February 2024, 5:29
I thought I heard Sargeant say the team hadn’t set him any hard targets this year – that sounds like a hard target.
Retired (@jeff1s)
26th February 2024, 7:20
Well he was in the paddock in Bahrain last week for pre-season testing, so…
Jere (@jerejj)
26th February 2024, 8:14
Cool helmet design, partly because predominantly light-blue is somewhat unusual.
Tristan
26th February 2024, 8:36
Ooo, we need a helmet thread, have you seen Bottas’? Gorgeous.
Zann (@zann)
26th February 2024, 9:45
Hamda Al Qubaisi, how great would that be, to have an Arab girl being a motor racing champion. I was reading how a majority of Iranians are really not religious already, not so into the regime and hijabs and all that, and this would really help that along. Inject a girl champion into the Emirates and that culture generally, with all the beards, and this would be motor sport and F1 doing a good thing :)
PitifulExcuse
28th February 2024, 17:12
Iran’s not an Arabic country so it’s not clear how an Arabic woman succeeding in F1 would have a big affect one way or another.
That said, it would be totally cool if Hamda Al Qubaisi got to F1 and became champion.
StephenB (@southernexile)
26th February 2024, 11:21
“He’s obviously an engineer, so a different background, but a lot of know-how, a lot of knowledge. The engineers can’t fool him because he knows what’s up and how the dynamics work.” – says Hulkenberg
But as Komatsu was formerly Haas Director of Engineering anyway, and in charge of those engineers, what’s the difference now?
dot_com (@dot_com)
26th February 2024, 17:06
JV finally putting some pressure on Logan. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have an option to replace him half way through the season if he still hasn’t shown any promise.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
26th February 2024, 18:21
Indeed, so far I haven’t seen anything that makes him better than mick schumacher, and there’s still a lot of people who think it was fair to fire him after his 2nd season, despite signs of improvement, so I’ll have no mercy whatsoever for sargeant in my comments.
dot_com (@dot_com)
26th February 2024, 20:15
Williams really need to protect themselves here. If they lose Albon to either Red Bull or Mercedes at the end of 2024, they will likely be stuck with an underperforming Logan again for 2025, so that they don’t suffer the huge inconsistency of having two new drivers. If Logan isn’t much, much closer to Albon by the summer break, he should be out IMO.
Ferdinand
27th February 2024, 9:03
Not going to happen.