F1’S AMERICAN HAS NEED FOR SPEED
Florida race-car driver Logan Sargeant is Formula 1’s first American in years
AS a boy growing up in South Florida, Logan Hunter Sargeant savored every pulsepounding second while chasing his older brother on anything with wheels. Many miles later, that insatiable pursuit has transformed the young driver into an international racing phenom.
Sargeant, 22, will become the first Formula 1 driver from the United States to compete in the apex of auto racing in nearly a decade when he gets behind the wheel at Sunday’s season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
The confident rookie credits his older brother, Dalton, as a key inspiration ahead of the biggest event of his brief career.
“We started racing together,” Sargeant told The Post Thursday from Bahrain. “So that was my main source of competition. I was always going up against my older brother. I wanted to be as quick as him, and I wanted to be as good as him.”
That natural impulse to beat 24year-old Dalton — who later made 22 starts in NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series between 2015 and 2018 — proved to be invaluable, Logan said.
“As a young kid, that’s probably a massive plus — having an older brother to chase,” he added. “That instilled a bit of competitiveness in me. I’ve always been the younger brother trying to beat the older brother.”
At just 5 years old, Sargeant started his motorsports journey as a kart racer. It was an immediate love affair, he said.
“I was really young,” he recalled. “It was really just something to have fun with on the weekends with my brother and dad, and then it just got more and more serious and competitive. It just kept escalating at an extreme rate.”
The champion kart racer now finds himself in F1 commandeering the wheel for a British team, Williams Racing, in one of 20 spots alongside teammate Alexander Albon, a 26year-old London native competing under Thailand’s flag. Sargeant will be driving Williams’ Mercedes FW45, an eight-speed, 79-inch-wide blue beast with a supercharged transmission unveiled last month.
His biggest fans
Sargeant and Albon covered more than 1,400 miles in preseason testing, but the season could be an uphill one for Williams, which finished last among F1 teams in 2022. Albon acknowledged Thursday he’s “more pessimistic than optimistic,” Autosport.com reported.
“So I do think, at least from the initial looks at testing, we are the 10th quickest team,” Albon told the outlet. “You have to be realistic. We definitely have made a better car but in terms of pace, everyone has — so it’s all relative.”
But Sargeant — the first American F1 driver since Alexander Rossi in 2015 — is convinced his high-speed hijinks as a child and beyond could reap huge dividends.
“I feel very relaxed,” he said. “I feel like my preparation has been topnotch, I feel like I’ve left no stone unturned. I’m fully prepared — physically and mentally — and I’ve had a lot of work in the stimulator with the engineers.”
Sargeant, a Fort Lauderdale native, now lives in London, but frequently has the Sunshine State on his mind.
“I absolutely get back home to Florida as much as I can,” he said, citing his close relationship with his brother Dalton and his parents, Dan and Madelyn Sargeant.
“Both my parents have always been very supportive of me racing,” Sargeant told Formula 2 Championship officials in June while racing for Carlin, another British team.
(Logan’s uncle, Harry Sargeant III, meanwhile, is an oil and shipping billionaire in Florida, where he once served as the state’s GOP finance chairman. He was previously linked to the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump.)
Logan’s tight family won’t be with him in Bahrain, but he expects to see his mother at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on April 2. A month later, his parents, older brother and grandparents will join him at the Miami Grand Prix, dubbed by some as the “Super Bowl” of Formula 1.
“I’ve never had the opportunity to
race a Formula car in America,” he said. “And that’s going to be an awesome experience, having my family and friends there, as well as the home crowd, the energy and the atmosphere.”
F1 zooms in US
The star-studded event last May drew a varied field of luminaries ranging from LeBron James to Tom Brady to Paris Hilton to Miami in its inaugural year of a decade-long deal.
Interest in Formula 1 among American fans has surged in recent years, due in large part to the popularity of Netflix’s “Drive to Survive,” a docuseries chronicling its drivers, managers and team owners. Since the show’s debut in 2019, the audience for ESPN’s F1 coverage has doubled — up to 1.5 million.
The US Grand Prix, held in Austin, Texas, since 2012, drew 250,000 fans in 2019 — the first year of “Drive to Survive” — which was a 15% increase from 2018. That figure swelled to more than 440,000 attendees in 2022, making it the most-attended F1 race of the entire season.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix on
Nov. 19 will be the third and final US race in the 2023 F1 season. Drivers like Sargeant will reach speeds in excess of 220 mph along the Strip, marking the first Grand Prix in Sin City since 1982, organizers announced in November.
The 23-race competition ends on Nov. 26 at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, where a patriotic Sargeant believes the support he expects to receive stateside will have Williams near the top of F1 team standings.
“Being from America, I think we’re all very patriotic, and I love where I’m from,” he said. “So I want to do the best I can to represent the USA to the best of my ability. But I’m more looking forward to having three races in the US.”
Sargeant, who previously competed in slower-speed international championships, became the first US-born driver to win a
Formula 2 race last July at the British Grand Prix. A week later, in just his first full F2 season, he won again at the Australian Grand Prix. He later finished fourth in overall standings.
For now, Sargeant is soaking up his moment as one of three rookie F1 drivers this year, along with McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, from Australia, and AlphaTauri’s Nyck de Vries of the Netherlands.
With just hours to go before practice sessions starting Friday, Sargeant said he was primed to take advantage of the “pretty awesome opportunity” awaiting him. The F1 newbie — too focused on racing to date right now — thinks he’s as prepared as possible for 57 laps of the 3.3-mile track awaiting him in Bahrain.
“I feel like I’ve done everything I can to be my best,” Sargeant told The Post. “I’m confident going into the season that’s going to pay off.”