AThe Sprint on Saturday had shown that our FW45 had the ability to move forward during Sunday’s 71-lap race São Paulo Grand Prix, but it was fair to say that we didn't have the start we were expecting.
Alex Albon was involved in a collision before the field had even reached Turn 1, and after it was confirmed he was safe and well, all our attention switched to Logan Sargeant.
From his P19 grid spot, he ultimately finished in P11, just one position shy of securing his second top-10 in Formula 1.
In this edition of Radio Replay, hear how he dealt with a chaotic opening few laps and what his initial reflections were as he crossed the line.
PRE-RACE:
PIT: “OK Logan tyre info. Everyone on softs, but us.”
LOGAN: “Love to hear it.”
PIT: “So the only cars on new [softs] are the top three, there’s the three cars around you and the two Haas. Everyone else is on used soft.”
LOGAN: “Let’s have a good day, boys and girls!”
FORMATION LAP:
PIT: “OK, we have a Ferrari stopped at Turn 6/7, that’s Leclerc. I’ll feedback to you, keep working your tyres as normal.”
LAP 1/71:
PIT: “Safety Car window IS open. Go SC, go SC.”
LOGAN: “Is Alex OK?!”
PIT: “Standby, I’ll confirm. We will have to follow the Safety Car through the pit lane. Alex is OK.”
LOGAN: “OK, good! I just tried to stay out of trouble there, I had no tyre temp for the start.”
PIT: “That’s fine, that’s fine. Box box for tyre change, we’re going to next set plus one as planned, box box.”
LOGAN: “Copy.”
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LAP 2/71:
PIT: “Work the tyres, work the tyres.”
PIT: “OK, that’s a red flag, red flag. Everybody will come back through the pits.”
LOGAN: “Ohhhh, mate!”
PIT: “Don’t worry about it, don’t worry. It doesn’t cost us anything. Into the pit lane, leave enough room in front of you and to the right from the pit wall.”
PIT: “Once the guys have secured the car, you can jump out if you want, we’ll get at least a 10-minute signal. Welcome to have a chat, come to have a little pit stop yourself if you need to!”
LOGAN: “Yeah, I’m hopping out.”
So much happened within the space of about five minutes surrounding the race start, which meant our driver, engineers and strategy team had to be ready to react.
Just two minutes before the start of the formation lap, Logan discovers he’s the only one starting on the medium tyre compound. Everyone ahead of him is either on used or new softs.
Immediately he knows that if it’s a clean start for all, he should be able to run longer going into the opening stint of the Grand Prix.
Of course, it wasn't a clean getaway. As he picked his way through the debris into Turn 1, Logan was somehow able to notice that it was his teammate who had taken quite a hefty hit and immediately wanted to know how he was.
As soon as Gatean got word that Alex was fine, this was fed back to Logan and decisions were quickly made to box Logan for softs as the field filtered through the pit lane.
Like in Mexico City the previous, shortly after we had boxed our driver, the red flag was flown but this time around we hadn’t lost any ground.
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CHEQUERED FLAG:
PIT: “OK, that's Chequered Flag. Chequered Flag. P11. P11. Please pick up rubber. That must have been a bit frustrating at some points, but in these conditions and high track temp, you raced well with what you had.”
LOGAN: “Sorry man, obviously we didn't have the pace today. I gave you everything I had, just not easy. Sorry about not being able to fight Tsunoda harder.”
PIT: “Copy that. Hey, they had a lot more pace today, that was quite hard to defend.”
Having run the soft throughout the remainder of the race, Logan’s final stint was very much one of tyre preservation rather than attacking up the field, which left him rather frustrated to stay in P11 after good pace to get him just outside the points.
Gaetan sympathised with our American rookie immediately after he crossed the finish line, whilst reassuring his driver that there really wasn’t much else he could have done in the fight with the AlphaTauri who eventually finished in ninth.
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