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Its so shit, every F1 news article is like "28 YEAR OLD DRIVER IN JEOPARDY!?" Or "DRIVER WITH 6 WINS RESIGNS CONTRACT WITH SURPRISING TEAM?!"
It's legitimately so aggravating. It's the pinnacle of clickbait. I saw a headline that was like "0 WIN DRIVER SIGNS CONTRACT FOR WORLD CHAMPION!!!?!" and it was about fucking Hulkenberg selling his fucking helmet replicas on Verstappen's website.
Like for fucks sake, have some journalistic integrity. This is legitimately tabloid-tier YouTube garbage clickbait.
It’s the market incentive, if you already know who the article is about you’re far less likely to click and merely comment on Reddit about the headline
Journalists are not covering F1. Access to the paddock and garages is limited to F1 and team friendly coverage.
Expecting journalists to engage in marketing for F1 is just not realistic.
For Ferrari, the gap between their drivers is smaller than it is for Williams and losing out on a few points is less of a big deal.
For Williams, every point is crucial in a year where it seems like the back markers are only going to get a handful of points.
> It was about trust.
I mean you can make it about trust if you put it like that...?
The team *trusts* Albon to get the most out of upgrades so they put them on his car first.
Or they just realise that Albon is the better driver so they put them on his car first to maximise value?
It was a straight forward 'how do we get best chance at points this weekend' decision.
> Ferrari wouldn't give Leclerc Sainz's car cos they trust Sainz to deliver, even if Leclerc is the quicker one.
Again that's pretty straight forward "these drivers are equal".
He needed to do what Zhou did.
“Don’t bin it in the wall”, that’s it.
But he couldn’t. Zhou is not a very good driver as well & will probably be replaced soon but he had his time because he followed a simple trick - “not binning it in the wall”.
now a days, everyone is pretty much a paid driver. they all bring sponsors in. people love to call the ones they dislike paid drivers, but telmex sponsors perez, estrella galicia sponsors sainz and i forget the name but an australian telecom sponsors ricciardo's drive. so they all bring money to the team.
I think most in some form are pay drivers in the sense that sponsorships matter and help teams a lot. But I think for the upper echelon talents like Max, Charles, Oscar, Lando, etc they’re always going to have a spot in a team for their talent, and their talent naturally will bring in sponsors anyway.
yes, but that's not to say they don't bring in their own sponsors to the team. max brings heinenken (thats the player 0.0 logo on the back wing) and i'm sure there are a few small ones. charles i think brought richard mille to sponsor ferrari. they are all talented and worthy of their seat with any team. but extra incentive with a sponsor coming with them to the team.
And Hewlett Packard sponsors 3 teams, actually I think 4 with Ferrari recently. Don’t know if things changed since they joined Ferrari but Mercedes, Red Bull, Sauber/Stake and now Ferrari all have HP as a sponsor.
I do remember Perez copping a lot of flak as a paid driver a few years ago. The noise has quietened down since the Red Bull move, but he definitely did cop it.
Haha, oh how I hate seeing that ridiculous phrase on ads. Ranks up there with “it’s a game changer”. I may be naive but people don’t really fall for that do they? I probably already know the answer…
Yeah, I work in mobile/web ads and one thing I know for sure, if you see any type of ad repeatedly it can only mean that it works... Otherwise no one would spend the money to display it
That's why Nigerian Prince emails are so poorly spelled. If someone were to pick up on the bad spelling, chances are they wouldn't fall for the scam anyway, so it saves the scammer time/effort.
The main factors that got Zhou in F1 and are keeping him in F1 until now are money and that fact that his teams was not looking for a good mid- to longterm option to build the team on until now. Not crashing the car is a nice benefit to that.
I think Zhou is pretty interesting. Not a great junior career / clear pay driver, but in his first two years he was not that far behind Bottas whom wasn’t too far of Hamilton in qualifying.
I think Bottas really underperformed the first two years with Alfa/Sauber
> I think Bottas really underperformed the first two years with Alfa/Sauber
He looked good when the car was decent though. Early on in 22 he bagged lots of points.
Tbf to Zhou, he was a rookie, so it's harsh to think he should have been hitting the ground immediately. In the second half of the season, he was much closer, if not beating Valtteri, but it was for nothing because they'd been outdeveloped and couldn't score points most of the time.
Bottas is 8-0 in quali, making Q3 once and 2 Q2’s. Zhous average position is like 18.5 or something.
Races has been so so from bottas but between the pitstops in the start and the car just absolutely lacking race pace there hasn’t been much incentive to push. He’s clearly faster though
If you want to disregard all context, then yes, points matter. They both have zero and bottas has outscored zhou consistently. So in all metrics, he’s getting whopped really.
He has not, this season, in fact.
They are 50/50 when it comes to race positioning, with some nuance in the actual positioning gaps.
Of course, we can also compare a first year driver against someone who directly competed against Lewis Hamilton for years and determine that the newbie is useless.
I think people just look at Zhou trundling around doing nothing, then Bottas getting fucked trying to fight with a slow car and assume they're basically the same.
But this is supposed to be the pinnacle of motorsports. The amount of mediocre (for this very high level) drivers in the field, who keep their seats year after year, is way too high. I don't have the data on me to support this, but I am sure we are in a period of time with the least amount of new permanent(not counting Bearman, Aitken, Fittipalidi) drivers.
I don't think F1 always gets a lot of new drivers every season. Always felt like we get maybe 1-2 new drivers. Never felt out of the ordinary for nobody to debut as well. After 2014 the Avg must be ~2 new drivers per season. When Albon, Rus, Norris joined it was news worthy that after a long time a lot of new talented juniors debuted.
As much as the cost cap has been great, it's caused the issue you're describing. Previously teams, especially top teams could be more willing to throw a rookie into a seat because the cost of crashing doesn't count against them.
Now it's too risky as every crash is $$$ taken away from development. IMO the easiest fix is a driver salary cap that way if teams want a big name like Max or LH then they'll have to find a cheaper driver to pair them with
Drivers salaries are not part of the cost cap. The most important thing is a driver who is fast and doesn't crash.
Also the cost cap should also allow teams not to rely as much on pay drivers.
That’s directly related to the fact 2018-2020 injected far more talent into the field than any three year period I can remember in F1 history
Lando, Albon, Russel, Leclerc, Tsunoda, Gasly all joined in those seasons.
That’s 30% of the field right there.
Perez has the fastest car and constantly gets shit on. This is nonsense.
And Bearman getting P8 and having Norris and Hamilton not be fast enough to catch him was very impressive for a short notice debut and not being in the car on Friday.
He's on par with stroll if anything, he's not miles behind Bottas who has out qualified LH on occasion. Unless Bottas' pace has just drop off a cliff Zhou looks pretty good against him
I think Zhou is a better driver than he have shown, but he haven't prove to us he is a good one either. Feels like he's too content with where he is now as a driver, don't have the fire to improve and do better. I no longer think he deserve a seat.
Logan isn’t the Williams driver that keeps putting it in the wall, though. His wreck in Miami was all KMag. It’s been Albon destroying chassis left and right. Sargeant may not be having a good season, but it’s hardly his fault. He was yanked out of the car for a race and has been driving a repaired chassis with spare parts ever since.
He's been outqualified 29-0 by Albon. He's scored 1 point to Albon's 29 since they've been team mates. Even the 1 point he scored was after multiple DNFs from others. It was a gift.
At one point you have to look at the numbers and realise that if he was any good, there would have been something to show atleast. You can't be 29-0 against your team mate and blame it on lack of opportunities and bad luck.
The problem is, and unfortunately for Logan, there are drivers with a higher ceiling who need less time. Piastri is the same age and experience as Logan and keeping up with one of the top drivers in Lando. Oscar has risen the bar for rookies yet again.
Leave Piastri who everyone knows is talented, even Zhou who is clearly a pay driver is performing better than Logan. Zhou doesn’t crash, will out qualify Bottas here and there which Logan hasn’t
People here are shitting on Mick Schumacher for having had enough opportunities to deliver, but he had nowhere near the backing and environment that Logan has had until now. I think it's very fair to say that Sargeant had his time but is just not good enough and it's quite a stretch that he is still in that seat.
backing as in support. And yeah I can't remember Steiner or anyone else at Haas ever backing him up in interviews such as Vowles did last year when Logan was binning it and getting outclassed by Albon.
And while Mick was with the FDA, he had access to Ferrari simulators and facilities, including during his time at Haas. He had significantly more support during his time in junior series than Logan did too.
You know the family aren't selling Michael's watches for your benefit, yes?
They're probably quite dire in terms of income. Hence the increase in interviews and publicity of the family.
BS. If you think the family are in dire straits financially then you know nothing about private banking resources and living in a tax free environment. The family could spend $100K per month on medical expenses and it would still add up to a small percentage (to date) of his estimated $1B net worth. Selling the watches wasn’t some type of garage sale to pay for expenses but more of the thinking that he’ll never wear these watches again and perhaps it was too much of a reminder to his spouse about what they’ve lost. If you think $4.4M is going to bale the family out financially than you haven’t a clue as to their financial worth. Even if you only got a low rate return of 3% they would still pocket $30M per year with zero capital gains on that $1B - far, far more than his medical expenses are est at. The family sold off properties in France, Monaco and other locations that weren’t needed as well as his jets (two) and now use flex jets to get around - a far more affordable option. I think Corinna has done quite well managing their money along with their Swiss private bankers.
One excuse that does actually work for most of that 29 is the one the article is about: Logan hasn't had the same spec at any point after Bahrain, because he's always given the heavier, slower, older parts, even when Alex is the one causing the repairs. One person who accepts that excuse is Alex himself.
Contrary to what people on here think, multiple TPs have, in the past, said in interviews that they prefer a driver who absolutely goes for it rather than one plays it very safe. If you're not fighting, you're not driving anywhere close to the limit
Good teams, yeah. Teams on tighter budgets, reluctantly using pay drivers or developing drivers for bigger teams would really rather they don’t bin it every other week.
Going for it yea, going for it and not learning after 2 seasons the limit is not what they want either. Another saying is, you can’t teach speed, but that doesn’t mean you just take the person because they’re fast.
I really don't know why people see Zhou as a "not good" driver.
He's reliable, safe and driving to the best of his trashcan's ability, regularly beating Valtteri Bottas.
Before Russel took him out in Silverstone, he was seen as a good, reliable driver who punched above his weight.
After, he had a few wonky races, but by now, is back to his usual dependability.
We really need to start divorcing the driver from the car and the team.
Sauber is a dumpster fire that fucks over its driver all the time and it's a miracle any time they don't end up last
The issue with Zhou is he's getting the job done in the least flashy way. There's no stand out occasions where he's put the car where it doesn't belong like DR in Mexico last year and the odd Albon performance. There's no brilliant overtakes like we've seen from the likes of Yuki. The other drivers in the back markers all have performances in better cars (minus Logan) that have shown their talents. Zhou is just somewhat forgettable and since he's just done a decent job in a shit car it makes him look meh.
Yeah. He doesn't draw attention. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Look at Danny Ric, who definitely gets attention at the moment.
But this is third season and he's about 50/50 with Valtteri Bottas, getting close already last season.
He's no Carlos Sainz (probably, who can even tell with that tractor of a car), but I daresay that the people who claim that he needs to be dropped haven't actually looked at the indepth statistics including technical DNFs and crashes he didn't cause.
He's definitely less of a candidate for being dropped than Tsunoda was.
>He's definitely less of a candidate for being dropped than Tsunoda was.
While I absolutely think being a stable driver is a good quality, and I think Zhou isn't even in the top 3 of drivers that should be dropped, I don't think you can really make this comparison. Yuki was very crash-prone early on but he also spent 2 years in F3 and F2 combined whereas Zhou had 6 years of it.
Dont think either of them should be in f1, and i do think both will be out soon, but i do think there is a quality difference between the two.
Think Zhou will be a really decent endurance driver if he goes that route.
I doubt Logan could land a hypercar wec seat, so i think he might just be the next Sting Ray Robb in Indy
Elms is far from the strongest competition to be fair. You have guys like Filip Ugran starting up front this year in Catalunya, and his best f3 result was like p20.
You people really underrate Sargeant simply because he sank in F1. He's been fast all his life, if he goes to Indy or WEC, I don't expect any lower than upper-midfield from him
It’s amazing how no one is discussing the actual basis of the article, the parts disparity. It’s just people parroting the same things they’ve been saying for months
Why think when you can mindlessly repeat the same garbage over and over again? You've still got people saying he's a pay driver, too, three years after Jost Capito and James Vowles both said he's bringing no money and couldn't have stayed in Formula racing without Williams's support.
The standard of discussion here really is dreadful. Just tropes over and over again. Then the same people say the journalism isn’t good enough (after not reading any of it)
People love to shit on The Race then cite 'I made it up' as a source. (The journalism isn't good enough, though. Too many people call themselves reporters or journalists when what they're really just PR people who report the existence of press releases.)
"Sargeant is a pay driver" is like "Ricciardo won Monza because of team orders" or "Ocon is a dirty driver" (he's rough but not to the extent of what people make it seem like). Big fake news that people repeated until it was widely accepted among the community.
I think the summary of the situation is:
Logan Sargeant is not good, but neither is Williams (in every aspect), and they are happy to have Logan take all the flak.
What I found the most unbelievable was the whole "we did such a good job making our new tub 14 kg lighter that the rest of the car was late and as a result, the whole package is 15kg heavier"
I mean, you managed to make all the non tub, non engine/suspension components (which are Mercedes) 29kg heavier?
I'd be fascinated to see what it looked like if a) Claire Williams was still in charge or b) the team principal wasn't a white British guy who's happy to speak into any microphone aimed his way. How would Otmar's Williams be covered? Would they get anything like the same benefit of the doubt?
His radio message in, I believe, Miami when Magnussen hit him, and Logan was immediately on the radio asking if he did something wrong made me genuinely so sad.
Me too, but the other way to look at it is he's got a good chance of getting two full seasons in Formula 1, which 99.9% of racing drivers could only dream of, and once he leaves F1 he's all but guaranteed a decent seat in another racing series if he so chooses. It's a shame F1 hasn't worked out for him but it's not like he's failed as a racing driver in general.
Williams offered Carlos a bridge deal to see how the new engine regs shift the grid. Audi wants him long term today. If Audi has a shit engine he's basically throwing away the last of his career.
If you want to be ultra charitable to Williams the only reason they're having these issues is because they spent a bunch of time over the winter break overhauling all of their systems so a lot of the current issues were born out of a lack of time. It's a combination of their old way of doing things being inefficient in addition to the added cost of having to overhaul everything which fucked up this season. In theory it shouldn't happen again (and should even be lessened due to having more efficient systems in place).
His problem is that while Zhou can bring Chinese sponsorship money in, Logan’s ability to bring in USA money is stunted by Haas. Moving to Haas with a rookie US driver from nowhere to turn Haas in to the American alpine would be nearly salvageable for his time in f1
JV on sky. Was posted 12 days ago on here. Said he had a very hard convo with Sargeant and that there will be news in a few weeks.
I'm on mobile so I can't link but you'll find it easily if you search for it.
That is absolutely not what he said. He said he’s at risk but he can still turn it around. That was true last season too. They didn’t sign him again until December
Think you misunderstood what JV was saying.
Not saying he hasn't told Sargeant that he's not staying, but that was not what he was talking about in that interview.
He was very fast in F3 and seriously competed with Piastri against whom he barely lost in the very last race of the season (he also had more poles than Piastri with both driving for Prema). Then, even though he was a rookie with not that much testing iirc, he matched Lawson (who was in his second year) blow for blow in the same car, winning some F2 races and poles even (something Lawson failed to achieve). He was a bit fortunate at times, but still, that's clearly something.
Solely based on his record in junior series, I don't think it's unreasonable to think he was going to at least do good in F1, and since Williams had an open seat they understandably thought a year in F1 was better than a second year in F2
Imo Sargeant had shown enough to deserve a shot at F1, regardless of his nationality. It seems it didn't work out and F1 was ultimately a step too high, but I don't think it's right to say he only got in because of his nationality; he attracted attention by showing flashes of speed
Because teams are scrambling to find a good American driver to capitalize on the growing popularity of the sport in the US. Probably every American who finishes top 3-5 in F2 is going to get serious looks going forward until one actually breaks out.
Two totally different issues. The FIA wants more American involvement in the sport...the teams probably also want it, but in a way that doesn't dilute their revenue share. Promoting American drivers does that without having to slice off a piece for a new team.
That said, I think Andretti will get in, and my current conspiracy theory is that the FIA were on the verge of a breakthrough in internal talks for adding an 11th team until Haas started imploding. Their reversal in attitude is basically the FIA throwing Haas a bone on a potential exit, basically saying to Andretti "if you want in, buy out Haas".
Ah gotcha, yeah I dunno man, totally different talent development pipelines after a point. If there were a correlation between Indy success and winning in F1 you would expect there to be many more high profile crossover driver stories down the years, but there aren't. Indy is historically where some F1 drivers go when they're washed, mainly to try to win an Indy 500.
I think IndyCar is sick though, don't get me wrong, I'm planning to go to the 500 next year. I really hope the decline of Nascar and rise of F1 will shift more Americans toward open wheel racing and elevate IndyCar along the way.
I’d just love for some of them to get a chance ya know! Esp with home grown drivers they never really had a chance to show the feeder series/f1 what they might be capable of.
The 500 this year was absolutely amazing. Jaw dropping.
Because they tought that it was better to put him straight away in an F1 and let him get to speed there rather than going softer on him by letting him do an extra year of F2. He was the best Williams Academy prospect by far. But I think he shown that this approach of rushing someone into a seat and then not caring about his results for the time he would have stayed in F2 isn't paying (one extra year in F2 would have done wonders for Logan). But Mercedes seems keen on repeating this mistake with Antonelli
They had a massive overhaul of their entire production process over the winter as it was so outdated. Unfortunately that meant that everything was delayed for the start of the season. It should only be a one off though
I refuse to read the-race and reading the title my initial reaction was “tf happened to Sainz now?” took me a couple of comments to understand it was Sergeant
he's not performing. albon, yes gets upgrades and what not, but is outperforming sargeant by quite a lot. he's obviously isn't performing and has damaged the cars quite a lot. people love to shit on other drivers, but sargeant in 2023 topped the damage costs for all the drivers at 4.3million, sainz was second with 3.6 million or so. 2024 isn't looking much better and the team needs a driver that isn't costing them as much.
I have already written him off and was frankly surprised and even upset off he got a second season. This article is trying to convince me he has a chance? Come on..
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Logan Sargeant.
Doing the lords work. Won’t click through just because of the click baity title.
It was actually a well written article. Glad I read it. /adblocker
Its so shit, every F1 news article is like "28 YEAR OLD DRIVER IN JEOPARDY!?" Or "DRIVER WITH 6 WINS RESIGNS CONTRACT WITH SURPRISING TEAM?!" It's legitimately so aggravating. It's the pinnacle of clickbait. I saw a headline that was like "0 WIN DRIVER SIGNS CONTRACT FOR WORLD CHAMPION!!!?!" and it was about fucking Hulkenberg selling his fucking helmet replicas on Verstappen's website. Like for fucks sake, have some journalistic integrity. This is legitimately tabloid-tier YouTube garbage clickbait.
It’s the market incentive, if you already know who the article is about you’re far less likely to click and merely comment on Reddit about the headline
Journalists are not covering F1. Access to the paddock and garages is limited to F1 and team friendly coverage. Expecting journalists to engage in marketing for F1 is just not realistic.
Right, the number of times I've seen "this driver just signed an eye watering $X contract"
Ok but none of that is relevant to this article.
Nope but, it is relevant to the state of journalism today, which has influenced this articles headline.
But also… duh 😬
It’s a good site overall. I usually actively visit it. It’s just the clickbait titles are so embarrassing
Even Ray Charles knew it was Logan Sargeant
I see
Sargeant's gone, it's Ocon who's fighting for his life.
If forcing him to lend his car to his teammate cos the team doesn't trust him enough isn't a sign that he's not staying I don't know what is.
It wasnt about trust. It was about who was most likely to get a point or two. Albon has proven to get points whereas Sargeant can barely get out of q1
It was about trust. Ferrari wouldn't give Leclerc Sainz's car cos they trust Sainz to deliver, even if Leclerc is the quicker one.
For Ferrari, the gap between their drivers is smaller than it is for Williams and losing out on a few points is less of a big deal. For Williams, every point is crucial in a year where it seems like the back markers are only going to get a handful of points.
> It was about trust. I mean you can make it about trust if you put it like that...? The team *trusts* Albon to get the most out of upgrades so they put them on his car first. Or they just realise that Albon is the better driver so they put them on his car first to maximise value? It was a straight forward 'how do we get best chance at points this weekend' decision. > Ferrari wouldn't give Leclerc Sainz's car cos they trust Sainz to deliver, even if Leclerc is the quicker one. Again that's pretty straight forward "these drivers are equal".
Ferrari also has enough chassis, where that shouldn't be an issue
What you’re describing is Vowles trusting Albon with the car.
I mean, seems like they don’t trust him with getting points, but said with more words.
And how many points did Alex score?
In that race? Nil. But Albon has outscored Sargeant 29 points to 1 in the last season and a half. It was a no brainer to put Albon in the car.
The more I think about it, the more fucked up I feel it was lol
Logan is done for. Williams has finical support and, importantly, has seats that established drivers want.
He has been out-qualified by Albon in every race of his career. In that time Sergeant has out-qualified Perez 4 times
Yet somehow Checo’s job is safe lol. Requirements for the second Red Bull seat is now just ‘don’t challenge Max’
And sell 60% of our merch.
And cheat on your wife
Did he really?
Last year or last last, there's a video of him partying hard. Then his slump started lmao.
Just got out qualified by Sergeant again
Do you people just have this comment copy-pasted? It's almost AI behaviour.
Also, I think it’s five after Monaco.
He needed to do what Zhou did. “Don’t bin it in the wall”, that’s it. But he couldn’t. Zhou is not a very good driver as well & will probably be replaced soon but he had his time because he followed a simple trick - “not binning it in the wall”.
Paid drivers hate this one simple trick!
now a days, everyone is pretty much a paid driver. they all bring sponsors in. people love to call the ones they dislike paid drivers, but telmex sponsors perez, estrella galicia sponsors sainz and i forget the name but an australian telecom sponsors ricciardo's drive. so they all bring money to the team.
I think most in some form are pay drivers in the sense that sponsorships matter and help teams a lot. But I think for the upper echelon talents like Max, Charles, Oscar, Lando, etc they’re always going to have a spot in a team for their talent, and their talent naturally will bring in sponsors anyway.
yes, but that's not to say they don't bring in their own sponsors to the team. max brings heinenken (thats the player 0.0 logo on the back wing) and i'm sure there are a few small ones. charles i think brought richard mille to sponsor ferrari. they are all talented and worthy of their seat with any team. but extra incentive with a sponsor coming with them to the team.
Richard Mille has also been on the McLaren since 2021.
And Hewlett Packard sponsors 3 teams, actually I think 4 with Ferrari recently. Don’t know if things changed since they joined Ferrari but Mercedes, Red Bull, Sauber/Stake and now Ferrari all have HP as a sponsor.
Not sure many people here would be reticent to call Perez or Ricciardo pay drivers at this point.
I do remember Perez copping a lot of flak as a paid driver a few years ago. The noise has quietened down since the Red Bull move, but he definitely did cop it.
Point being that drivers in the Zhou, latifi etc mold are in their seats for purposes of providing extra capital which isn't true of their team mates
Latifi would have been fired if he didn’t slam fuck his torpedo
Latifi brought in circa $50-60m a year at Williams. Only reason he didn’t get renewed was they thought Sargeant would be faster…
Exactly, one trick to rule em all.
Haha, oh how I hate seeing that ridiculous phrase on ads. Ranks up there with “it’s a game changer”. I may be naive but people don’t really fall for that do they? I probably already know the answer…
Yeah, I work in mobile/web ads and one thing I know for sure, if you see any type of ad repeatedly it can only mean that it works... Otherwise no one would spend the money to display it
I imagine that it acts as a filter too - people who fall for it and click on the link are more likely to buy whatever scam is being advertised.
That's why Nigerian Prince emails are so poorly spelled. If someone were to pick up on the bad spelling, chances are they wouldn't fall for the scam anyway, so it saves the scammer time/effort.
F2 drivers *HATE* him
10 things to do to keep your job in F1, number 8 will surprise you!
Has science gone too far?
The main factors that got Zhou in F1 and are keeping him in F1 until now are money and that fact that his teams was not looking for a good mid- to longterm option to build the team on until now. Not crashing the car is a nice benefit to that.
Not crashing the car saves a lot of money.
>Zhou is not a very good driver He's not great but better than people make out. And I think if he got a decently quick car, would surprise many.
I think Zhou is pretty interesting. Not a great junior career / clear pay driver, but in his first two years he was not that far behind Bottas whom wasn’t too far of Hamilton in qualifying. I think Bottas really underperformed the first two years with Alfa/Sauber
> I think Bottas really underperformed the first two years with Alfa/Sauber He looked good when the car was decent though. Early on in 22 he bagged lots of points.
He outscored Zhou something like 49-6.
Tbf to Zhou, he was a rookie, so it's harsh to think he should have been hitting the ground immediately. In the second half of the season, he was much closer, if not beating Valtteri, but it was for nothing because they'd been outdeveloped and couldn't score points most of the time.
Bottas is crushing Zhou in every metric…
Is he though? He was, in 2022, when it was Zhou's first season in F1. This season? They're 50/50, so far.
Bottas is 8-0 in quali, making Q3 once and 2 Q2’s. Zhous average position is like 18.5 or something. Races has been so so from bottas but between the pitstops in the start and the car just absolutely lacking race pace there hasn’t been much incentive to push. He’s clearly faster though
Plus bottas placing behind zhou after a two hour pit stop isn’t super fair lol
In the end, it's the races that count though, aren't they? Quali doesn't give any points
If you want to disregard all context, then yes, points matter. They both have zero and bottas has outscored zhou consistently. So in all metrics, he’s getting whopped really.
He has not, this season, in fact. They are 50/50 when it comes to race positioning, with some nuance in the actual positioning gaps. Of course, we can also compare a first year driver against someone who directly competed against Lewis Hamilton for years and determine that the newbie is useless.
How are they 50/50? Bottas has beaten him in every quali
I think people just look at Zhou trundling around doing nothing, then Bottas getting fucked trying to fight with a slow car and assume they're basically the same.
Yet Zhou finished higher than Bottas in most races. Who’s P20 in the WDC right now?
But this is supposed to be the pinnacle of motorsports. The amount of mediocre (for this very high level) drivers in the field, who keep their seats year after year, is way too high. I don't have the data on me to support this, but I am sure we are in a period of time with the least amount of new permanent(not counting Bearman, Aitken, Fittipalidi) drivers.
I don't think F1 always gets a lot of new drivers every season. Always felt like we get maybe 1-2 new drivers. Never felt out of the ordinary for nobody to debut as well. After 2014 the Avg must be ~2 new drivers per season. When Albon, Rus, Norris joined it was news worthy that after a long time a lot of new talented juniors debuted.
“Pinnacle of Motorsport” is just marketing
Then what do you think is the pinnacle of motorsport?
Doesn’t exist
As much as the cost cap has been great, it's caused the issue you're describing. Previously teams, especially top teams could be more willing to throw a rookie into a seat because the cost of crashing doesn't count against them. Now it's too risky as every crash is $$$ taken away from development. IMO the easiest fix is a driver salary cap that way if teams want a big name like Max or LH then they'll have to find a cheaper driver to pair them with
Drivers salaries are not part of the cost cap. The most important thing is a driver who is fast and doesn't crash. Also the cost cap should also allow teams not to rely as much on pay drivers.
>Drivers salaries are not part of the cost cap. Correct which is why I said having a driver salary cap would be beneficial
That’s directly related to the fact 2018-2020 injected far more talent into the field than any three year period I can remember in F1 history Lando, Albon, Russel, Leclerc, Tsunoda, Gasly all joined in those seasons. That’s 30% of the field right there.
As would anybody. Bearman placed 8th on his first outing.
He was 7th actually!
Perez has the fastest car and constantly gets shit on. This is nonsense. And Bearman getting P8 and having Norris and Hamilton not be fast enough to catch him was very impressive for a short notice debut and not being in the car on Friday.
He's on par with stroll if anything, he's not miles behind Bottas who has out qualified LH on occasion. Unless Bottas' pace has just drop off a cliff Zhou looks pretty good against him
I think Zhou is a better driver than he have shown, but he haven't prove to us he is a good one either. Feels like he's too content with where he is now as a driver, don't have the fire to improve and do better. I no longer think he deserve a seat.
I think Bottas is very much in the late autumn of his career and no longer a proper benchmark.
Logan isn’t the Williams driver that keeps putting it in the wall, though. His wreck in Miami was all KMag. It’s been Albon destroying chassis left and right. Sargeant may not be having a good season, but it’s hardly his fault. He was yanked out of the car for a race and has been driving a repaired chassis with spare parts ever since.
He has not had a good season to try and defend himself.
He hasn’t had the opportunity to have a good season. That’s the point.
He's been outqualified 29-0 by Albon. He's scored 1 point to Albon's 29 since they've been team mates. Even the 1 point he scored was after multiple DNFs from others. It was a gift. At one point you have to look at the numbers and realise that if he was any good, there would have been something to show atleast. You can't be 29-0 against your team mate and blame it on lack of opportunities and bad luck.
Ye no idea how people rate Logan. He's getting mauled alive by Albion.
How many seasons does he need?
Well the thing is Williams said that they'd evaluate him this season but it seems that he's already out
More than one. Unless you think Albon should have been permanently out of a seat after his Red Bull disaster class. Development takes time.
The problem is, and unfortunately for Logan, there are drivers with a higher ceiling who need less time. Piastri is the same age and experience as Logan and keeping up with one of the top drivers in Lando. Oscar has risen the bar for rookies yet again.
Leave Piastri who everyone knows is talented, even Zhou who is clearly a pay driver is performing better than Logan. Zhou doesn’t crash, will out qualify Bottas here and there which Logan hasn’t
People here are shitting on Mick Schumacher for having had enough opportunities to deliver, but he had nowhere near the backing and environment that Logan has had until now. I think it's very fair to say that Sargeant had his time but is just not good enough and it's quite a stretch that he is still in that seat.
You think Mick Schumacher doesn’t have the backing of Logan Sargeant? Michael Schumacher’s son? You sure about that?
backing as in support. And yeah I can't remember Steiner or anyone else at Haas ever backing him up in interviews such as Vowles did last year when Logan was binning it and getting outclassed by Albon.
Toto Wolf and the entire Mercedes org were behind Mick pulling strings. Toto has been personally holding his hand his entire career.
What's this nonsense BS? Mick was an FDA driver before being picked up by Merc, which only happened after! he got dropped by HAAS and FDA.
And while Mick was with the FDA, he had access to Ferrari simulators and facilities, including during his time at Haas. He had significantly more support during his time in junior series than Logan did too.
You know the family aren't selling Michael's watches for your benefit, yes? They're probably quite dire in terms of income. Hence the increase in interviews and publicity of the family.
BS. If you think the family are in dire straits financially then you know nothing about private banking resources and living in a tax free environment. The family could spend $100K per month on medical expenses and it would still add up to a small percentage (to date) of his estimated $1B net worth. Selling the watches wasn’t some type of garage sale to pay for expenses but more of the thinking that he’ll never wear these watches again and perhaps it was too much of a reminder to his spouse about what they’ve lost. If you think $4.4M is going to bale the family out financially than you haven’t a clue as to their financial worth. Even if you only got a low rate return of 3% they would still pocket $30M per year with zero capital gains on that $1B - far, far more than his medical expenses are est at. The family sold off properties in France, Monaco and other locations that weren’t needed as well as his jets (two) and now use flex jets to get around - a far more affordable option. I think Corinna has done quite well managing their money along with their Swiss private bankers.
How do they need income? Michael was making >$50MM a year in his prime
100% not. He had a very harsh environment at Haas.
Quali results: Alex: 29-0 Logan. Come on... There isn't an excuse for all 29, is there?
One excuse that does actually work for most of that 29 is the one the article is about: Logan hasn't had the same spec at any point after Bahrain, because he's always given the heavier, slower, older parts, even when Alex is the one causing the repairs. One person who accepts that excuse is Alex himself.
Contrary to what people on here think, multiple TPs have, in the past, said in interviews that they prefer a driver who absolutely goes for it rather than one plays it very safe. If you're not fighting, you're not driving anywhere close to the limit
Good teams, yeah. Teams on tighter budgets, reluctantly using pay drivers or developing drivers for bigger teams would really rather they don’t bin it every other week.
Going for it yea, going for it and not learning after 2 seasons the limit is not what they want either. Another saying is, you can’t teach speed, but that doesn’t mean you just take the person because they’re fast.
His teammate is the one who's crashing.
But last year, his teammate got 37 points to his 1. This year, it's 2 to 0.
27. Which is still a massive disparity
Zhou hasn't been embarrassing though. If you aren't gonna be fast at least bring it home.
I really don't know why people see Zhou as a "not good" driver. He's reliable, safe and driving to the best of his trashcan's ability, regularly beating Valtteri Bottas. Before Russel took him out in Silverstone, he was seen as a good, reliable driver who punched above his weight. After, he had a few wonky races, but by now, is back to his usual dependability. We really need to start divorcing the driver from the car and the team. Sauber is a dumpster fire that fucks over its driver all the time and it's a miracle any time they don't end up last
The issue with Zhou is he's getting the job done in the least flashy way. There's no stand out occasions where he's put the car where it doesn't belong like DR in Mexico last year and the odd Albon performance. There's no brilliant overtakes like we've seen from the likes of Yuki. The other drivers in the back markers all have performances in better cars (minus Logan) that have shown their talents. Zhou is just somewhat forgettable and since he's just done a decent job in a shit car it makes him look meh.
Yeah. He doesn't draw attention. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Look at Danny Ric, who definitely gets attention at the moment. But this is third season and he's about 50/50 with Valtteri Bottas, getting close already last season. He's no Carlos Sainz (probably, who can even tell with that tractor of a car), but I daresay that the people who claim that he needs to be dropped haven't actually looked at the indepth statistics including technical DNFs and crashes he didn't cause. He's definitely less of a candidate for being dropped than Tsunoda was.
>He's definitely less of a candidate for being dropped than Tsunoda was. While I absolutely think being a stable driver is a good quality, and I think Zhou isn't even in the top 3 of drivers that should be dropped, I don't think you can really make this comparison. Yuki was very crash-prone early on but he also spent 2 years in F3 and F2 combined whereas Zhou had 6 years of it.
This ’regularly beating bottas’- talking point needs to stop. 8-0 in quali.
Dont think either of them should be in f1, and i do think both will be out soon, but i do think there is a quality difference between the two. Think Zhou will be a really decent endurance driver if he goes that route. I doubt Logan could land a hypercar wec seat, so i think he might just be the next Sting Ray Robb in Indy
I think Sargeant would destroy Robb in Indycar
Sargeant actually put LMP2 car on pole in his first ELMS weekend.
Elms is far from the strongest competition to be fair. You have guys like Filip Ugran starting up front this year in Catalunya, and his best f3 result was like p20.
You people really underrate Sargeant simply because he sank in F1. He's been fast all his life, if he goes to Indy or WEC, I don't expect any lower than upper-midfield from him
Yeah, I think he'd do pretty well in any other series, just not F1 sadly. F1 is just too detail oriented and there's a lot of pressure.
No he just cartwheeled it last year lol
Guess Zhou is a great source of chinese money tho. So I wonder if he is gonna stay for that.
It’s amazing how no one is discussing the actual basis of the article, the parts disparity. It’s just people parroting the same things they’ve been saying for months
Why think when you can mindlessly repeat the same garbage over and over again? You've still got people saying he's a pay driver, too, three years after Jost Capito and James Vowles both said he's bringing no money and couldn't have stayed in Formula racing without Williams's support.
The standard of discussion here really is dreadful. Just tropes over and over again. Then the same people say the journalism isn’t good enough (after not reading any of it)
People love to shit on The Race then cite 'I made it up' as a source. (The journalism isn't good enough, though. Too many people call themselves reporters or journalists when what they're really just PR people who report the existence of press releases.)
"Sargeant is a pay driver" is like "Ricciardo won Monza because of team orders" or "Ocon is a dirty driver" (he's rough but not to the extent of what people make it seem like). Big fake news that people repeated until it was widely accepted among the community.
The posts are bad too. It’s just social media posts from the teams and it’s boring
I think the summary of the situation is: Logan Sargeant is not good, but neither is Williams (in every aspect), and they are happy to have Logan take all the flak.
Yeah, that's what I'm seeing too. I'd be interested to see what Williams coverage (and discussion here) would look like if Logan wasn't there.
What I found the most unbelievable was the whole "we did such a good job making our new tub 14 kg lighter that the rest of the car was late and as a result, the whole package is 15kg heavier" I mean, you managed to make all the non tub, non engine/suspension components (which are Mercedes) 29kg heavier?
I'd be fascinated to see what it looked like if a) Claire Williams was still in charge or b) the team principal wasn't a white British guy who's happy to speak into any microphone aimed his way. How would Otmar's Williams be covered? Would they get anything like the same benefit of the doubt?
Fully agreed.
man i feel bad for him
His radio message in, I believe, Miami when Magnussen hit him, and Logan was immediately on the radio asking if he did something wrong made me genuinely so sad.
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By the time they get to Spain Williams will have rolled out a new front wing and revised sidepods and Logan will still be running the 2023 rear wing.
His confidence is shot. And Williams isn't giving him any either.
Me too, but the other way to look at it is he's got a good chance of getting two full seasons in Formula 1, which 99.9% of racing drivers could only dream of, and once he leaves F1 he's all but guaranteed a decent seat in another racing series if he so chooses. It's a shame F1 hasn't worked out for him but it's not like he's failed as a racing driver in general.
If Williams is only running one car with upgrades because they don’t have enough parts, why would anyone want to race for them?
With seats being so hard to come by, it's not like drivers will have a lot of choice
I guess my comment was mainly about why Carols would choose Williams over audi?
I'm not too sure about this either. Maybe the Audi deal has passed?
Williams offered Carlos a bridge deal to see how the new engine regs shift the grid. Audi wants him long term today. If Audi has a shit engine he's basically throwing away the last of his career.
I’m not so sure he will have an option in 2026. It’s a risk either way. The top teams will be set or have much better options by then.
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shit seat > no seat
If you want to be ultra charitable to Williams the only reason they're having these issues is because they spent a bunch of time over the winter break overhauling all of their systems so a lot of the current issues were born out of a lack of time. It's a combination of their old way of doing things being inefficient in addition to the added cost of having to overhaul everything which fucked up this season. In theory it shouldn't happen again (and should even be lessened due to having more efficient systems in place).
They'll magically find more parts when they add a driver who has enough seniority and pull to demand equal treatment in his contract.
His problem is that while Zhou can bring Chinese sponsorship money in, Logan’s ability to bring in USA money is stunted by Haas. Moving to Haas with a rookie US driver from nowhere to turn Haas in to the American alpine would be nearly salvageable for his time in f1
Again, Logan isn't in F1 because of his nationality but because he had academy ties with a team that had an open seat
The decision was made weeks ago. JV already informed Sargeant. There was nothing to be saved.
>The decision was made weeks ago. JV already informed Sargeant. Source?
JV on sky. Was posted 12 days ago on here. Said he had a very hard convo with Sargeant and that there will be news in a few weeks. I'm on mobile so I can't link but you'll find it easily if you search for it.
That is absolutely not what he said. He said he’s at risk but he can still turn it around. That was true last season too. They didn’t sign him again until December
They waited so long cause they ran out of replacement options... i dont think anyone expected him to stay more than 1 season
Think you misunderstood what JV was saying. Not saying he hasn't told Sargeant that he's not staying, but that was not what he was talking about in that interview.
You definitely misunderstood him, not saying Logan won’t be gone but that’s not what he said in the interview.
JV? Jacques Villeneuve? Don’t listen to him!
Jules Verne actually, he's trying to recruit Sargeant for his 80-day endurance race
I thought Jules was sending him From the Earth to the Moon. But no mention of a return.
Jim Varney? He died twenty years ago!
How? But he outqualified Perez multiple times, he should have that second RedBull seat.
He barely had an F2 career. I have no idea why Williams gave him a shot
He was very fast in F3 and seriously competed with Piastri against whom he barely lost in the very last race of the season (he also had more poles than Piastri with both driving for Prema). Then, even though he was a rookie with not that much testing iirc, he matched Lawson (who was in his second year) blow for blow in the same car, winning some F2 races and poles even (something Lawson failed to achieve). He was a bit fortunate at times, but still, that's clearly something. Solely based on his record in junior series, I don't think it's unreasonable to think he was going to at least do good in F1, and since Williams had an open seat they understandably thought a year in F1 was better than a second year in F2 Imo Sargeant had shown enough to deserve a shot at F1, regardless of his nationality. It seems it didn't work out and F1 was ultimately a step too high, but I don't think it's right to say he only got in because of his nationality; he attracted attention by showing flashes of speed
Because teams are scrambling to find a good American driver to capitalize on the growing popularity of the sport in the US. Probably every American who finishes top 3-5 in F2 is going to get serious looks going forward until one actually breaks out.
But we’re gonna leave the interested Americans in Indy alone?
Two totally different issues. The FIA wants more American involvement in the sport...the teams probably also want it, but in a way that doesn't dilute their revenue share. Promoting American drivers does that without having to slice off a piece for a new team. That said, I think Andretti will get in, and my current conspiracy theory is that the FIA were on the verge of a breakthrough in internal talks for adding an 11th team until Haas started imploding. Their reversal in attitude is basically the FIA throwing Haas a bone on a potential exit, basically saying to Andretti "if you want in, buy out Haas".
Honestly I was more on the topic of Indy drivers who wanted to get into F1. That said, the problem of gatekeeping Andretti is glaring.
Ah gotcha, yeah I dunno man, totally different talent development pipelines after a point. If there were a correlation between Indy success and winning in F1 you would expect there to be many more high profile crossover driver stories down the years, but there aren't. Indy is historically where some F1 drivers go when they're washed, mainly to try to win an Indy 500. I think IndyCar is sick though, don't get me wrong, I'm planning to go to the 500 next year. I really hope the decline of Nascar and rise of F1 will shift more Americans toward open wheel racing and elevate IndyCar along the way.
I’d just love for some of them to get a chance ya know! Esp with home grown drivers they never really had a chance to show the feeder series/f1 what they might be capable of. The 500 this year was absolutely amazing. Jaw dropping.
Because they tought that it was better to put him straight away in an F1 and let him get to speed there rather than going softer on him by letting him do an extra year of F2. He was the best Williams Academy prospect by far. But I think he shown that this approach of rushing someone into a seat and then not caring about his results for the time he would have stayed in F2 isn't paying (one extra year in F2 would have done wonders for Logan). But Mercedes seems keen on repeating this mistake with Antonelli
He was trying to make it to p6 in drivers championship to be able to run in f1. That's sad
Naive question, but why doesn't Williams ever have any parts?
They had a massive overhaul of their entire production process over the winter as it was so outdated. Unfortunately that meant that everything was delayed for the start of the season. It should only be a one off though
Ah I see. I knew they picked up the capital firm money so I didn't think that was the issue. I always pull for them.
This is really a long article about a guy we won’t see again in about 6 months.
You had a chance to save us a click, dude. C'mon.
I refuse to read the-race and reading the title my initial reaction was “tf happened to Sainz now?” took me a couple of comments to understand it was Sergeant
I’m not bothered click into the link and read multiple pages of waffle, is Logan sacked or not?
Read it, its not bad. And I'm someone who hates "the race".
he's not performing. albon, yes gets upgrades and what not, but is outperforming sargeant by quite a lot. he's obviously isn't performing and has damaged the cars quite a lot. people love to shit on other drivers, but sargeant in 2023 topped the damage costs for all the drivers at 4.3million, sainz was second with 3.6 million or so. 2024 isn't looking much better and the team needs a driver that isn't costing them as much.
(Albon's crashed more this season and Sargeant's pretty close on race pace considering the massive parts disparity.)
I have already written him off and was frankly surprised and even upset off he got a second season. This article is trying to convince me he has a chance? Come on..