There Is a New Recruit at Williams Where Drivers Make It Pay

by , 4 September 2024

Logan Sargeant was dropped from the Williams Formula 1 team ahead of the 2024 Italian Grand Prix. The 23-year-old was never an obvious F1 star, having finished nineteenth, third and seventh in three FIA F3 Championships. His only full season in Formula 2 resulted in a fourth-placed finish in the standings.

Logan Sargeant walks from his car after stopping on track during a practice session for the 2023 Grand Prix of Belgium.

Logan Sargeant walked away from many Williams cars he had wrecked during his two seasons in Formula 1. ©Getty

In 36 Formula 1 starts, the American failed to score a World Championship point. At the same time, his teammate, Alex Albon, enjoyed nine points finishes. Ultimately, Sargeant’s costly car-wrecking antics – and he destroyed several cars – added further nails to his coffin, and he was shown the door with nine races of 2025’s season remaining.

Talking to Sky Sports’ dedicated Formula 1 channel ahead of Monza’s Grand Prix, Williams team boss, James Vowles, gave his reasons for replacing Sargeant with 21-year-old Argentinian driver Franco Colapinto. He described Sargeant’s dismissal as “one of the toughest things I’ve had to do in my career.”

In his following sentence, with a telling smirk, Vowles added, “seemingly, in Williams, we have quite a few of these that appear,” before quickly returning to his personal difficulties in telling Sargeant he was excess to requirements. Indeed, the Williams team are past masters at hiring and firing drivers.

Here, we will look at some forgettable drivers that have raced for the British team. Likewise, explain how they got their chance to drive for Williams – one of only five Formula 1 teams, alongside Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull, to win 100 races – albeit the common denominator is money and not star quality.

Pay Pay It Is in Williams’s DNA!

Racing is an expensive business. It is a fact that was not missed by Williams’ founder, Frank Williams. His Frank Williams Racing Cars team had nine individual drivers race for it in 1973. In the 1974 and 1975 seasons, ten racers drove one of the team owner’s cars in a race.

The bulk of these drivers were individuals who, through personal sponsorship, personal wealth, or family funding, helped finance the team’s operations by paying for the privilege to compete. For obvious reasons, the commonly used term ‘pay driver’ was coined, and the practice is part of Wiliams’s DNA.

Officially, Logan Sargeant did not fall into this category. It makes Williams’ decision to persevere with him beyond 2023 – when his teammate finished eight places higher than him in the championship standings – all the more bizarre. Critics would point out that, like all good pay drivers, he is coincidentally related to mega-money. His uncle, Harry Sargeant III, is a verified billionaire.

Money Can’t Buy You Love

Sargeant inherited his Formula 1 seat from Canadian racer Nicholas Latifi, who formally brought significant cash into the Williams team through the privately owned Sofina Foods, a company for which his father is the CEO. This year, Forbes estimated Latifi’s Snr’s net worth to be $3.4 billion.

Latifi joined the F1 grid in 2020 after finishing fifteenth and tenth in the F3 Championship. Three seasons in Formula 2 saw him finish fifth, eighth and second in the standings. However, his three seasons in Formula 1 were dire. His championship finishing positions were twenty-first, seventeenth and twentieth.

Scoring points just three times – with a best finish of seventh from his 61 starts – Latifi was regularly outshone by his teammate, George Russell. He was another who made countless mistakes that destroyed his cars. His biggest faux pas was an unforced error in the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

His indiscretion there led to the deployment of a safety car towards the end of the race, which worked to steal the World Championship away from Lewis Hamilton. Nevertheless, reportedly bringing $30 million into the team annually, the power of the chequebook saw him re-signed for a third and final year when Formula 1 betting sites made him their rank outsider for every race.

Kubica and Sirotkin Through Williams Revolving Doors

Before Latifi, Robert Kubica had partnered with George Russell in a Williams. In the fifteen races that both drivers completed the race distance during the 2019 season, the Polish driver – who brought a lot of sponsorship dollars into the team – finished behind the young Brit 14 times. At this point, the team was struggling with performance and funds.

Kubica had just one year with the team. He had replaced Russian driver Sergey Sirotkin. The son of the head of the National Institute of Aviation Technologies in Moscow also brought bucket loads of sponsorship money – via three backers with close links to the Russian state – to fund his race drive. It yielded just one world championship point.

Sirotkin had a single year in the sport and finished bottom of the F1 drivers’ championship standings. Nevertheless, some creative vote rigging and a bot-attack by his countrymen saw him voted ‘Driver of the Year’ in a poll organised by Sky Sports! At this time, his teammate was Lance Stroll, and his path into the sport and longevity have been remarkable.

A Stroll in the Park for Mega Wealthy Boy

The biggest yacht parked in Monaco’s harbour during recent Formula 1 race weekends has belonged to Laurence Stroll. It used to be a 97-metre-long vessel called Faith. However, that ship, which reportedly cost $200 million to construct in 2017, has been sold to Nicholas Latifi’s father. Laurence has since upgraded!

The Canadian has money, lots of it. Forbes’s most recent survey suggests his personal wealth is $3.9 billion. How can you spend such vast sums – apart from buying super-yachts? According to a 2016 Autoweek story, $80 million in odd change could be used to secure your son a race seat in a Williams F1 car!

Lance Stroll spent two seasons with Williams – retiring from his first three races but claiming an excellent third in the first F1 race staged in Azerbaijan – before switching to the newly re-named Racing Point team at the start of the 2019 season. The move was inevitable as the team had been bought by a consortium of investors led by Stroll Sr.

At the start of 2021, Racing Point was re-badged as Aston Martin, and Lance Stoll still drives for his dad’s team. However, in four seasons and over 80 races, Stroll Jnr has yet to stand on a podium step. To quantify that string of results, in contrast, his teammate, Fernando Alonso, took eight podium finishes in the 2023 season alone.

Maldonado Is Williams’ Only Race Winner in 20 Years

An honourable mention in this list must go to Venezuela’s Pastor Maldonado. Possibly the most errant of all Formula 1 drivers since the start of the 1980s – even outdoing Nikita Mazepin for recklessness – the millions offered and paid in sponsorship by the state-owned Venezuelan oil company PDVSA bought him a Williams race seat.

During his three years with the team (2011-13), Maldonado made 58 starts for Williams when he claimed a fifth place and took five other points paying finishing positions (between 8th and 10th). Those results were outstripped by his race victory at the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix. It was the team’s first success in eight years.

In the contest, Maldonado showed speed from the outset, qualifying second and starting from pole after the original pole-setter, Lewis Hamilton, was penalised for a technicality. He never buckled when Fernando Alonso loomed in his mirrors late in the race to land a flash-in-the-pan result.

Maldonado did not finish in the top 10 of his next ten race starts. And the team has been winless since that day more than a dozen years ago. Subsequently, 14 drivers have raced for Williams. That number will be 15 in 2025 as its famous revolving door has now swung open for Carlos Sainz Jr.

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