Logan Sargeant’s crash in final practice for the Dutch Grand Prix broke many parts on his recently-upgraded Williams FW46. It was also the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back for team principal James Vowles.
Williams were already suffering through a particularly attrition-heavy season. They had weathered a tough start to the season in which they accumulated broken carbon fibre at a worrying rate, and not just due to Sargeant’s mistakes.By mid-season they were getting on top of the situation and had recently introduced a promising upgrade for their car. Then Sargeant needlessly climbed onto a wet kerb during practice at the cramped Zandvoort track and smashed his FW46 to pieces.
The car was repaired in time for the race but there was no fixing Sargeant’s relationship with the team. But if Vowles showing him the door wasn’t necessarily a surprise, his choice of replacement was.
Vowles’ courageous call paid off, however. While Sargeant failed to pick up a point in 15 starts, Colapinto came eighth in his second race, on a track he had never previously raced at. He did it after out-qualifying Alexander Albon, something Sargeant never managed once.
Was Colapinto flattered by circumstances? After all, he had the benefit of an upgraded Williams which made finishing in the points a more realistic prospect for the team over the second half of the season.
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What’s more, Colapinto was arguably no less immune to crashing than Sargeant. He had two big hits in Brazil, then a particularly costly smash in qualifying at Las Vegas (where he nonetheless beat Albon again).
But the clearest sign of Colapinto’s potential came in qualifying. Not only did he beat Albon twice, he was almost immediately much closer to his team mate’s pace than Sargeant had been. Over his nine grand prix qualifying appearances, on five occasions he either got closer to Albon than Sargeant did, or qualified ahead.
With Carlos Sainz Jnr coming to take over the second Williams seat next year, Colapinto’s appointment was always intended to be temporary. But his spell as a substitute has shown Williams there is real potential there if he can polish out the mistakes which proved Sargeant’s downfall.
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BAH | SAU | AUS | JAP | CHI | MIA | EMI | MON | CAN | SPA | AUT | GBR | HUN | BEL | NED | ITA | AZE | SIN | USA | MEX | BRZ | LAS | QAT | ABU | ||
Sargeant | Q | ![]() |
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BAH | SAU | AUS | JAP | CHI | MIA | EMI | MON | CAN | SPA | AUT | GBR | HUN | BEL | NED | ITA | AZE | SIN | USA | MEX | BRZ | LAS | QAT | ABU | ||
Colapinto | Q | ![]() |
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Unrepresentative comparisons omitted. Negative value: Sargeant/Colapinto was faster; Positive value: Albon was faster
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Formula 1
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Riccard
21st December 2024, 12:24
The surprise wasn’t that Seargent was replaced… it’s that it took so long to happen. A year ago we were all stunned to see him keep his seat.
Colapinto was thrown into the deep end, sure, but not because Vowles was brave enough to act half a season early… it’s because he acted half a season late. We could have seen even more from Colapinto if the switch came at the start of the previous off-season.
Like Red Bull replacing Perez or Man United replacing Ten Hag, I agree with the decisions, but I think management moved far too late and are worse off as a result.
An Sionnach
21st December 2024, 13:14
Completely agree. Even though there’s no real testing now so it’s nice to give young drivers a chance, the seasons are far too long to mess about with those who are hopeless. There is clearly a lot of talent out there. It would be a shame if some of them did not get a chance to prove themselves. Eight races to not be a disaster and twelve to show an inkling of promise would mean more could get a chance. I spoke in defence of Sargeant last year, but was dead wrong. Colapinto showed that promise isn’t something you’ve got to go fishing for – it can grab you by the throat and shake you. He had his crashes, but the speed was there and he could go toe to toe with experienced drivers. In some ways many existing drivers aren’t very good at actually racing and were made to look silly by the likes of Colapinto and Lawson.
Jere (@jerejj)
21st December 2024, 16:10
Riccard Letting Sargeant continue beyond one season was perfectly justified & normal as Williams isn’t like Red Bull, not to mention drivers with comparatively worse rookie seasons haven’t been hastily sacked either.
GT Racer (@gt-racer)
21st December 2024, 23:15
They kept Seargent because he did show flashes of speed in 2023 and the hope was that with a seasons experience to build on he’d show more improvement in a 2nd season than he ended up doing.
It’s funny that back when testing was unrestricted rookie drivers having struggles in their first year was basically expected and therefore mistakes were forgiven and often even after a poor rookie campaign it wasn’t uncommon to see them get a 2nd year to show signs of improvement.
Yet now there’s no testing and young drivers get very little opportunity to fully prepare for their first year and yet they are now expected to be on it from day 1 and have fans screaming for them to be dropped if they struggle in a rookie campaign.
Of course you always had those special talents like a Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher etc… who could turn up and impress from day 1 but for every one of those you always had a dozen more who needed a bit of time to learn & improve & that includes some drivers who went on to win races & at least be in contention to win a championship.
SteveP
21st December 2024, 13:00
You have to wonder whether, if it was Colapinto starting the season, the driver to replace with Sainz was Albon.
anon
21st December 2024, 23:03
SteveP, whilst Colapinto did win plaudits for his speed, as noted in the article and by other posters, he did also have some fairly substantial accidents – by some accounts, Colapinto cost Williams almost as much as Sargeant did in terms of replacement parts in 2024. That does tie in with what some posters who tracked his progress through the junior series have said, which is that he was a quick driver, but also one that was also a bit error prone.
Now, Albon also had some very hefty shunts during the season – some have claimed he was the second most expensive driver in terms of accident damage. However, those accidents that Colapinto had might have given Williams reason to consider sticking with Albon over Colapinto.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
27th December 2024, 15:29
The only thing the Sargeant issue proved was Vowles was big enough to be his own man and correct a bad decision, not necessarily get rid of a ‘bad’ driver.
Personally I think if Liberty and F1 are serious about a younger demographic, they should feature the ‘rookies’ and as many talents as possible in the sprint race, at all rounds. Give each youngster a fraction of the calendar, give them time to feature and show off, give the crowd some new people to think about, etc… Maybe even have them feature in the first practice, for shake-down, basic runnings, tire tests, and some performance checks.
Give the experienced drivers 2 practice sessions, qualifying and a proper race. If demographics are really that important to F1, liberty and the stake holders should be forking over more to the teams for power units, + wear and tear. Or force the manufacturers to price the power units from @astronomically stupid to something reasonable.
MichaelN
21st December 2024, 13:02
Those graphs are more impressive than I had assumed; well done to Colapinto! He set himself up for a rough end to the season with crashing a car that was already running a Refurbished V4 set of parts, but on the whole he certainly didn’t embarrass himself.
Unfortunately for him, I doubt the brief hype that already started to fade in the latter races will sustain him for another year. He’ll want to find a place to race – and win – in 2025 if he wants to do more F1 races in 2026 and beyond.
El Pollo Loco
21st December 2024, 13:12
I hope we see him replace Doohan or Hadjar (the latter of whom I’m rooting for to fail because he is simply a bad person) if they struggle mightily in 2025.
Jere (@jerejj)
21st December 2024, 16:11
Unlikely & simply pointless to be judgmental towards either of them, especially the latter at this point.
Aucra (@craigs)
21st December 2024, 23:52
Whilst Colapinto did have a few too many crashes, as noted Albon had a few during the year as well. Which raises the question: how difficult was the Williams to drive, and did that contribute to the number of incidents they had?
Either way, Williams went backwards this year, and how long is the Vowles turn around plan and will the investors have patience?
Speedzracer
21st December 2024, 23:57
He’s terrible with driver management, by the end of the year both his drivers were crash test dummy’s. Only correlation is the undue stress placed on the drivers by the team principal who seems to push drivers to overdrive the car for results that the car can’t deliver, Williams is not Mercedes no matter how hard he daydreams he’s ToTo..
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
24th December 2024, 0:12
Vowles won by letting Sargent off the hook, but will still have to address a lot of other fundamental issues I believe he has in that team. There is a big disconnect in modern F1 between the stake holder / investco. Vs back in the days when the guys running/operating the teams knew what they were doing. So much more political correctness and inefficiency, and a breeding ground for poor leadership. James has his work cut out for himself, and the guys at Williams who don’t want to win need to leave that organization, and I think there is an ‘easy’ way to do this, and it is going to require both incentives and hard hard work. The easiest way to get rid of parasites is to cut them off. Add a dash of Lewis Hamilton’s positive mindset and it’s only a matter of time before they bottom out and find a good course.
jpvalverde85 (@jpvalverde85)
26th December 2024, 15:49
Vowles took his time to measure Colapinto and probably made his decision after watching some good performances on F2 including a victory at Imola with a late lap pass. The massive bills from crashes may have some roots on the car being difficult but also context wise there were multiple stuff piling, too much resources to build parts, old parts due to lack of development, peaky car behaviour (had a window of potential but was not easy to find), and both drivers pushing hard to hop in the top 10 maximizing the opportunity for mistakes. Brazil was quite a blunder, because both cars failed and because Alpine got that double podium and sinked Williams hopes of a shot for a better closure of the season.