It was never a surprise that Williams would part with Logan Sargeant, the only question was what, or when, would be the tipping point?
Sargeant’s disastrous wreck running off-track at Circuit Zandvoort last weekend in FP3 ultimately sealed the deal.
The crash did not total the chassis but destroyed everything else with the car. In the current cost-cap era, teams cannot afford unnecessary wrecks like that – especially something that was so obviously a driving fault.
This idea needs to preface the rest of this article: Sargeant is a good race car driver. He genuinely is, and he will win wherever he decides to go next.
But good drivers just do not cut it in the biggest race series in the world, one which is limited to just 20 spots on the grid.
Sargeant seemed to marginally improve this season, but he never once qualified ahead of teammate Alexander Albon. Sargeant never finished ahead of Albon when both had classified race results in the same grand prix.
The first rule of Formula 1 is to beat your teammate, and Sargeant utterly failed to do this throughout his F1 career. In one season, Nicholas Latifi beat Albon four times in races and three times in qualifying before being replaced by Sargeant for a year and a half.
Even Nikita Mazepin, generally considered one of the worst F1 drivers in the last 10 years, beat teammate Mick Schumacher six times in his one season at Haas.
I could easily reference Mazepin and Latifi’s head-to-heads because I wrote about them precisely 11 months ago, in a column where I argued Williams really shouldn’t bring Sargeant back the next year.
They ended up doing so, and it still just did not work. The Australian fiasco this season, where he wrecked and wiped out the car’s chassis, killed any faith Sargeant still had in the team, and everyone in the paddock knew he would be gone after that.
With Sargeant dismissed, America once again lacks an F1 driver to call its own. Looking at the current feeder lineups, there’s not a lot of hope for a driver to emerge representing Uncle Sam.
Maybe an American can circumvent the European ladder and get in through IndyCar, but F1 teams aren’t going to encourage the jump from an outside series again. Nyck de Vries went from being Formula E champion to flaming out rather dramatically for AlphaTuari last season, ruining the chances for many non-F2 drivers to get an honest look by teams.
But there is one beacon of hope. There are two Americans in F2 right now. One is Juan Manuel Correa, who you will forget about after reading this sentence.
The other is a driver who is currently fifth in points with one win. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, and raised in Houston, Texas, it’s Aston Martin Driver Development member and former Red Bull Junior Jak Crawford.
Truthfully, I wasn’t sold on Crawford entering this season after his distant 13th-place finish in his rookie campaign in 2023. But Crawford has done a fine job improving his consistency in his sophomore season.
Crawford’s chances of being America’s next F1 driver are not particularly high. But there is a potential avenue within Aston Martin. As Fernando Alonso is not getting any younger, Crawford would be a contender for that seat as the in-house option if Alonso retires again in the next few years.
But there are a couple of potholes. Mr. Stroll has been very star-driven when a seat opens next to his son Lance Stroll, first hiring Sebastian Vettel and then scooping up Alonso to replace Vettel. If a former champion or proven winner isn’t on the market, the next element would be the challenge from the engine supplier.
Honda will supply engines to Aston Martin in 2026. As Aston Martin will be the lone team Honda will work with, Honda could have some leverage on who gets an open seat.
The Japanese auto-making giant has a knack for supporting at least one Japanese driver in series they compete in, such as Takuma Sato in IndyCar. Yuki Tsunoda also stands as an example of this, as Honda still works with Red Bull Racing prior to 2026 and thus Tsunoda is still a part of that program.
Thus, an open seat at Aston Martin could be available to drivers such as Tsunoda or Ayumu Iwasa before Crawford gets the seat.
And all of these aspects ignore that Aston Martin has continued to employ 2022 F2 champion Felipe Drugovich, who tests for them and participates, albeit sparingly, in FP1 sessions.
But outside of Crawford, the landscape is increasingly bare. Ugo Ugochukwu is signed with McLaren and is currently racing in the Formula Regional European Championship. But the 17-year-old is still at least a year away from F3, and that’s a hard leap to make.
I don’t think it will be another 15-year wait like it was between Scott Speed and Sargeant as far as full-time American drivers go. Nor will we have to wait another 30 years for an American to score points in F1, like we did between Michael Andretti and Sargeant. But chances are not looking good for more American representation anytime soon.
Michael has watched NASCAR for 20 years and regularly covered the sport from 2013-2021, and also formerly covered the SRX series from 2021-2023. He now covers the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and road course events in the NASCAR Cup Series.