As he sat in a high-rise building in New York City overlooking the East River, Logan Sargeant was on his phone fielding text messages and calls.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people from his home area of south Florida asking him if he can try to get tickets to this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix.
‘Little do they know I get like, no tickets,’ Sargeant says with a laugh before adding that he tries to hand out ‘as many as I can’.
Sargeant, a Fort Lauderdale native, is back in his own backyard for his second crack at success around the Hard Rock Stadium.
Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, Sargeant described his approach to the race, his struggles with Williams to start the season, and his hopes for the rest of the campaign.
Logan Sargeant is ready for a return to his home state of Florida for the Miami Grand Prix
The Williams man described his mood going into the weekend as, ‘relatively relaxed, excited to be racing at home again.’
He continued: ‘I think looking at it from a performance standpoint, it’s been not the easiest start of the year for the team. I don’t think we’ve really executed a clean weekend as a whole yet. So that has to be the approach going to the weekend.
‘I feel like if we do that, it’ll put us in a decent position. Whether it’s enough to score points or not, I’m not sure, but that has to be the target.’
He’ll be looking for some better success after qualifying and finishing dead last in last year’s edition of the Miami Grand Prix.
‘I think last year didn’t go according to plan. I genuinely think this track should suit our car a little bit better,’ Sargeant believes.
‘So hopefully that gives us an opportunity… Obviously, I’ve had good moments racing in America, the race in Austin, qualifying in Vegas.’
Sargeant, who scored points at the Circuit of the Americas last year, hopes to repeat that feat ‘in front of family and friends, all the people that are texting me, trying to get tickets to the race.
‘That would be amazing and definitely a special moment to do the full loop and come back and score points.’
Sargeant and Williams Racing have had a rocky start to the year with no points picked up
Sargeant believes this year’s car will be better suited to the Miami International Autodrome
While Sargeant says there’s always stress and that ‘pressure doesn’t really go [away]’ in a Formula One race, he believes his second time around the Miami International Autodrome will be more successful than his first one.
‘You have a bit more of a sense of comfort knowing the track than not knowing it. It’s always a big learning curve when you go to a track for the first time.
‘But I think the big thing is this week is a sprint, which will make things a little bit more challenging, make it more important that myself and the engineer has got the set up right going into the weekend as you have very limited time to change anything.
‘So yeah, fingers crossed. But we’ll have to wait and see… [we] just need to find our feet quickly.’
Sargeant has not found his feet yet this season. Neither has his team. Williams are one of three teams yet to score a single point this campaign.
Teammate Alex Albon has gotten close three times – with two P11 finishes and a P12 finish in the most recent race in China. Meanwhile, Sargeant’s best finish was P14 in Saudi Arabia.
‘I don’t think anyone’s particularly happy with how everything’s unfolded to start the year,’ he admitted. ‘I think we all know that there’s a lot more performance on the table.
Sargeant: ‘I don’t think anyone’s happy with how everything’s unfolded to start the year’
‘There’s a lot more that we can do to execute better weekends, and I think there’s bits and pieces everywhere of things that as a whole, we need to do better.
‘I think as long as we’re all aware of those, moving to fix those and ultimately get everything out of each other… That’s where we are and that’s where we know we need to head.’
Sargeant was at the center of one of F1’s biggest on-track controversies of the year so far – when Williams removed him from his own car at the Australian Grand Prix after Albon wrecked and had irreparable damage to his machine.
The team chose to put Albon in Sargeant’s car for the weekend to try and earn some points, but the Thai racer came up one place short.
When asked to recall that moment, after a pause, Sargeant said that it was ‘maybe not as juicy as you’d expect, but obviously it was a disappointing moment.’
Sargeant says he felt like he was having a ‘great weekend to that point’ saying that he was feeling ‘really comfortable’ after a P14 finish in Practice 1 and a P13 finish in Practice 2.
The crux of Williams’ problems came over a month ago at the Australian Grand Prix
Teammate Alexander Albon crashed hard in practice and couldn’t race in his car that weekend
So, the team made the decision to sideline Sargeant and put Albon in his car for the weekend
It left Logan looking on from pit lane while Albon only managed to pilot the car to a P11 finish
‘I would say that was more the disappointment – not being able to close out a weekend that was going so well to that point,’ Sargeant said. ‘But honestly, after that, I was there with the team the next day. And after that, I went to Bali and completely forgot about it for a week.
‘So it stuck with me as a disappointing moment for probably about 24 hours. And then from that point forward, I pretty much just cleared it from my head.’
He added: ‘It doesn’t even cross my mind anymore. I’m just fully focused on the races ahead. I don’t even think about the past. As I said, from a whole, it hasn’t been a great start to the year, and now I’m just focusing on doing my part to help clean that up.’
When it comes to pressure stemming from that Australia decision – then paired by a DNF in Japan and a setback in China – Sargeant tries to take a more optimistic tack.
‘I think you just have to look at the positive. There’s been quite a few of them. It goes back to the point of just needing a clean weekend to show a good step forward.
‘There’s always pressure. Racing is a performance-based sport, and you will quickly realize there is very short memory, both for positive and negative. So all it takes is a couple of good races. You’re on top of the world again.’
Which brings us back to Miami. It’s hard to tell what a good race for Sargeant looks like, but if the rumors are to be believed, he needs to start turning his form around soon to try and achieve his stated goal of staying with Williams for 2025.
That followed up with struggles in Japan and China that leaves Sargeant in a tough position
Doing that in his backyard, as he puts it, would be the icing on the cake: ‘I think it’s just more enjoyable to be able to drive at home. It’s really hard to explain.
‘It’s just this extremely different feel in a weekend that you’re racing at home. And this goes for all three [American] Grand Prix. There’s a different atmosphere, a positive atmosphere, more excitement for myself and an extra source of motivation to just have a good weekend.
‘At the end of the day, every race matters. So when you look at pressure, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world. Every race, it doesn’t really change.
‘But I guess the feeling that you have at a race weekend can differ by the atmosphere of where you’re driving and the fans. Obviously, of course, I want to do great in front of the American fans.’
