Williams F1 had to replace Logan Sargeant. Why didn't it turn to Lawson or Schumacher?

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When Logan Sargeant wrecked his car after dipping a wheel onto the grass in final practice at Zandvoort last Saturday, it was clear that his time at Williams in Formula One was running out.

Sargeant’s car sat in the middle of the track, flames flickering at the rear of the damaged chassis that would not be repaired in time for him to make it out for qualifying a few hours later as his disappointed mechanics looked on.

It was the latest of several crashes for Sargeant in F1 but by far the most decisive. After keeping faith with the American for 2024 despite an underwhelming rookie season and supporting him through a difficult year, Williams team boss James Vowles had seen enough. It was time to take action.

Williams moved quickly, announcing on Tuesday that Franco Colapinto, the 21-year-old Formula Two driver who is part of its academy, will replace Sargeant for the remainder of the season, starting with the Italian Grand Prix. Colapinto has run just one F1 practice session (at Silverstone earlier this year) and will be thrown in at the deep end this weekend by taking over the cockpit during a double-header with tricky circuits coming in Baku and Singapore.

It shows how badly Williams felt it needed to take action and replace Sargeant midseason instead of waiting until the end of the year for Carlos Sainz’s arrival from Ferrari.

The decision to replace Sargeant

Sargeant’s position at the team had been under scrutiny for some time, given his continued struggles to match teammate Alex Albon for pace. He scored just a single point last year compared to Albon’s tally of 27, but in a static driver market and with few alternative options, Williams opted to give Sargeant a second season. It had supported him since Formula Three and wanted to see if he could find the consistency to match his raw pace.

Year two didn’t offer the uplift that Sargeant needed. Some factors worked against him, like being benched for the Australian Grand Prix when Albon’s crash meant only one car was available due to a spare chassis shortage. Sargeant also felt he did not have equal equipment to Albon until Austria, with the updated, lighter versions of parts going to Albon first. At Spa, Sargeant described having to drive “over a tenth quicker to be a thousandth quicker” due to the differences he thought remained between the cars.

But the pace still wasn’t there. Sargeant’s head-to-head record against Albon in qualifying ends at 0-for-35, and he was never classified ahead of his teammate. Even in a less fruitful year for Williams, Sargeant wasn’t close enough to Albon. By the summer races, it had long been clear that Sargeant would exit at year’s end; whether he’d see out the season at all was also in doubt.

The public message from Vowles to Sargeant was, “Earn your place.” At the British GP, where he finished a season-best P11, and in Hungary, Vowles felt Sargeant did that. “What I’m not going to sit here and say is Logan absolutely has a place nailed forever in this situation,” Vowles said at Spa. “Earn it, as I have to earn my job, as Alex has to earn his job at the same time.”

Sargeant’s costly crash in FP3 seemed to seal his fate. (Sipa USA)

After a disappointing Spa weekend, the Zandvoort crash undid any good work Sargeant had put in. In F1’s budget cap era, it simply cannot keep happening. Vowles knew that.

In the hours after qualifying, Vowles started to move toward replacing Sargeant. According to sources, Vowles met with Red Bull team principal Christian Horner on Saturday after the crash to enquire about reserve driver Liam Lawson’s availability for the remainder of the season, serving as a clear signal that he was looking at alternatives to Sargeant as early as the next race at Monza.

When The Athletic asked Sargeant on Sunday if he’d sought any assurances from Vowles about seeing out the season given the paddock rumors, he replied: “No, I hear them every weekend, so it’s nothing new.” He then added he “couldn’t care less.”

Only this time, it was something new. It was a serious move to replace him with immediate effect, so serious that Williams has now turned to Colapinto, who was racing in F3 just 12 months ago.

Why talks with Red Bull over Lawson cooled

Colapinto is a young, exciting driver who is part of Fernando Alonso’s management group and has been with Williams’ academy since the start of 2023. His FP1 outing at Silverstone, a reward for his excellent start to the F2 season, deeply impressed the team.

To replace a driver chiefly because of his lack of form and recent crashes with someone whose F1 experience is so limited shows how desperate Williams was to make a change. Yet it had two established options ready and waiting.

Lawson was an obvious choice. The New Zealander’s five-race cameo for AlphaTauri last year, deputizing for the injured Daniel Ricciardo, made clear how good he is. While there wasn’t room on the grid for him in 2024, Lawson remains in contention to step up next year, depending on whether Red Bull reshuffles its drivers. Question marks continue to linger over Sergio Pérez and Daniel Ricciardo’s futures beyond this season.

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A loan to Williams would have given Red Bull a chance to get Lawson more seat time to warm him up before potentially racing for one of its teams next year. But Horner was clear on Sunday when he was asked about the possibility of a deal that, while possible for Monza, would hinge on the terms allowing that “if we needed him back, that we could have him back quite quickly.” He is, after all, the reserve driver for both teams and first in line should a cockpit become available, meaning Red Bull would not have wanted to loan Lawson out without any ability to recall him.

Vowles and Horner were due to resume talks after Zandvoort, but they didn’t discuss the matter again after Williams’ interest had cooled. Lawson will have to wait a bit longer before returning to the F1 grid.

A second snub for Schumacher

Another driver who would have been an option for Williams was Mick Schumacher, who spent two years with Haas in 2021 and 2022 before joining Mercedes as a reserve driver. Schumacher has been racing in the World Endurance Championship this year for Alpine but remains heavily involved with the Mercedes F1 program, supporting Lewis Hamilton and George Russell in the simulator.

On Sunday, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff hoped Schumacher would get a chance with Williams “because we haven’t seen the real Mick,” noting his championship success in junior categories. “I think he deserves a chance,” Wolff said. “If the opportunity would be at Williams, it’s something that we would be cheering for. But it’s James Vowles’s decision.”

Schumacher does have racing commitments in WEC through the rest of the year that clash with grands prix, including this weekend when he’ll be in Austin for the Lone Star Le Mans race. However, an F1 comeback chance would always have been the priority.

This was not the first chance Williams had to turn to Schumacher. At the end of last year, Schumacher was one of the highest-profile free agents on the market, but Williams opted to re-sign Sargeant instead.

Schumacher’s time at Haas wasn’t filled with success, coinciding with the team’s on-track struggles, but there were also a handful of big crashes that, similar to Williams with Sargeant, did play a role in Haas’s decision to cut ties at the end of 2022.

In Colapinto, Williams is taking a punt on a young driver who it has helped nurture and has watched develop in the last 18 months, making the decision an endorsement of its academy system.

It is low risk, given that the team is not engaged in any tight constructors’ battles, sitting adrift in ninth in the championship, and that it will only be for nine races before Sainz joins in 2025. It will give him real-time F1 experience to use in the future and help Williams build up another exciting young junior driver.

The decision to replace Sargeant is no surprise. But the timing and the identity of his replacement is a surprise, acting as another curveball in F1 2024’s compelling narrative.

Top photo of Liam Lawson and Logan Sargeant: Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images, REMKO DE WAAL/ANP/Sipa USA