Williams Team Principal James Vowles says the side is prepared to give Logan Sargeant the remainder of this season before deciding if he will retain his seat for 2024.
After AlphaTauri confirmed Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda last month, Williams remains the only team on the grid yet to announce both its drivers for next year.
Vowles has previously expressed that the Grove squad has outlined the targets Sargeant must hit in order to return alongside current team-mate Alex Albon.
Asked in Qatar whether Williams will be able to make a decision on Sargeant’s future imminently, Vowles said: “No, I suspect it’ll be to the end of the season.
“I think we’ve already committed to the direction of travel we’re in, he has targets to that and it’d be wrong to go against that decision point. So end of the year.”
Sargeant has struggled extensively throughout his rookie campaign, with Albon responsible for accumulating all of Williams’ 23 points so far in 2023.
The American newcomer has also got caught up in a variety of incidents, most recently in Japan when he sustained a hefty crash at the final corner in qualifying.
His team suggested that his shunt in Suzuka masked a promising outing, leading Sargeant to admit that he would leave some margin in Qatar to ensure a cleaner weekend.
Vowles asserts that Sargeant possesses the underlying pace but must reduce the untimely errors to be able to deliver it on a more regular basis when it’s most needed.
“He and I talk at least once a week, if not multiple times a week,” he added.
“The pace is there. That’s the thing that we wouldn’t be able to fix or repair – but what happens is, when it comes down to the crunch time, there are elements of inconsistency that creep in, and in form of that, goes into an accident sometimes.
“In Suzuka the lap he did was, line-on-line on the data with Alex, but obviously it’s marred by the fact that the last corner, he had far too aggressive a throttle application and there was a crash, and a significant crash as a result of it.
“What we’re working with him on is actually the progression up until that point, he dialled it from two seconds away from Alex to within a tenth in FP3 – in fact he was faster in FP3. And it’s actually keeping that mindset all the way through that we’re trying to do.”
The ex-Mercedes Strategy Director also believes that Sargeant has been negatively impacted by the reduced testing time rookie drivers are granted in the modern era.
With only three days of pre-season testing allocated to all the teams this year, Sargeant was only afforded one-and-a-half days in the FW45 before his debut grand prix.
“We have – and I’ve said this publicly – a responsibility to invest in our rookie drivers,” Vowles continued.
“We’ve put him there, and we’ve given him nearly no testing mileage. I’m used to 30,000km, not 850km. “But what we want to see is continued progress and now a focus on making sure we keep that consistency in there, which will then deliver results.”
Vowles reckons that Sargeant’s encouraging pace from the outset in Bahrain hindered his development as it downplayed the scale of the adaption period in the top flight.
Pressed on if he sensed there was frustration creeping in for Sargeant, Vowles countered: “I think from him the frustration has been there for many months actually.
“He went into Bahrain – probably the worst thing that can happen – he went into Bahrain overlapped with Lando [Norris] in terms of Q1, and he thought perhaps the challenge in front of him may not be as significant as it really is.
“What you then saw after that time… and Alex has grown, I think, across this season, and the gap started to grow, as you found a driver that’s now frustrated, his normal tools aren’t producing the quality of lap-time that was there previously.
“He knows how to win. He’s won in Formula 3, won in Formula 2 but applying that now in Formula 1 and then not achieving results creates more and more frustration – and then that ends up with over-driving, fundamentally. That’s the dialling back bit.”
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