Report: Spielberg success for Sargeant as we narrowly miss out on points in F1

Just one week after his first Formula 2 win, Logan Sargeant took another P1 finish to catapult him into second place in the championship standings and become a contender for the 2022 F2 crown.

Our American rookie crossed the line in P3, but after post-race penalties disqualified and demoted his fellow podium visitors, the final race classification sees Logan as the victor with the wind very much now in our Academy driver’s sails.

In Formula One, Alex Albon battled through the midfield to rise from 15th on the grid to finish P12 while Nicholas Latifi retired from the race after suffering from damage which affected his race pace.

Alex was challenging for another top-ten finish as he got to enjoy the upgraded FW44 in full flow before two late passes from drivers on fresher tyres saw our No23 cross the line in P12, but with plenty of positives to take.

Logan’s win came in challenging circumstances with the Red Bull Ring still wet from morning rain, but with some track surface rapidly drying out.

Drivers were split on whether dry tyres or wets were the way to go, something that Logan battled with: “I knew on the way to the grid it was going to be close between the two tyres.

“We stuck with the wets, which is difficult call when starting in P3 because you don’t want to take too much risk.

As the track dried, the wet-tyre runners slipped behind, but the Williams Academy driver fought back to the front once he stopped for dries: “I had a good pit stop – shout out to the Carlin crew for doing an awesome job there.

“I didn’t worry about tyre deg or anything like that. My focus was just to go forward and overtake as many cars as possible, and that’s what I did.

“The team’s done an excellent job giving us a great car every weekend. I’m just doing my best to extract all the potential from it, and I feel like we’re doing that recently.”

Meanwhile, in F1, Albono could finally test the car upgrades in a race, and although he couldn’t grab any points, he still enjoyed his Sunday: “It was a fun race. We took risks, we were bold and I had to push a little bit too hard on the tyres to keep up with Valtteri as he was a little bit quicker than us.

“I knew what I was doing wasn’t kind to the tyres but I was trying to stay close to him.

“You risk and you push to fight for points and today it didn’t quite work out for us, but I still feel it was a good race.

“The whole race we were more or less matching the McLarens, we hit a bit of traffic here and there but I was really happy with our pace and we’ve definitely made a step forward this weekend.

“It was the first proper race with the new aero upgrade that we have and there’s a lot learnt from today so we can look at the data and come back stronger in France.”

In car No6, Nicky’s 50th race in F1 was tricky from Lap 1 after picking up damage, and our Canadian driver explained how he struggled with the car’s balance: “We sustained floor damage from running over some debris at the start of the race and I ran wide on one curb.

“Towards the end of the first stint I could feel the balance getting worse. Beginning of the second stint there was a lack of downforce and pace.

“The decision was to retire the car to save the engine mileage and we'll be ready to go again In France.”

Although Nicky’s race was hampered by damage, our Head of Vehicle Performance, Dave Robson, was heartened by the strategy for Alex and the speed in the updated FW44: “Today was a good recovery after the result yesterday.

“Alex drove well and the strategy worked well. Having got into the top 10 with only 10 laps to go, it was disappointing to miss out on a point.

“However, we had been battling with Bottas since the first pitstop and it was a tight race that could’ve gone either way.

“At least we got a full race completed with the updated car, which gives some data to go through before we run again in France.”

The damage on Nicky’s car from Lap 1 continued to affect the aero, and Dave was wary of that causing further problems: “Nicholas suffered with some floor damage early in the race, which cost him a lot of downforce and made the car very difficult to drive.

“As the damage worsened, we elected to retire him before more significant damage occurred.

“After the damage done in Silverstone last week, to come straight to the Red Bull Ring and for Alex to be competitive throughout the weekend and for Nicholas to continue his good qualifying performance, is a good result for the entire team who worked very hard to get us back into this position.”

Roy Nissany was another beneficiary of the penalties in Formula 2 as our Israeli driver got back to point-scoring ways by being promoted to P9, while Zak O’Sullivan finished his F3 Feature Race in 17th place.