In paddock rumor/news, apparently Williams was actively querying other teams about their reserve drivers availability for the end of the season...The saturday crash probably was the nail in an early termination coffin. It would not be surprising if Sargeant's last race was Monza......if he makes it that far.. I bet if any 3rd driver has ANY sponsor $, they'll be in a williams shortly.

Also Uralkali, ex sponzor of Mazepin / Haas managed to sue the team for taking sponsoring $ and still kicking Mazepin out when the Ukraine war started... They won in court and Haas was not disputing that, but apparently were slow to pay up. So their trucks were prevented from leaving the Zandvoort paddock until the $10 Mil wire was received, on monday - LOL !

Apparently Williams is in talks with Red Bull over Lawson and Mercedes over Schumacher . Toto supposedly pushing for Mick to get the seat even if it's just for the remaining races .

A lot of legal wrangling with lawyers and contracts and $$$ involved to make a driver change . I personally think Williams has been very fair with Logan and it just didn't work out . Williams would be smart to try a different driver to get feedback from a different perspective .

Who might that be?

Bet you a beer you don't guess which driver ran with the idea first

Nigel Mansell

Kimi. (Leave me alone I know what I’m doing)

I wouldn't hazard to make that guess, but “Fred" had/has a habit of making up a few to several places by the end of lap 1. At least more frequently than most drivers. That has also varied over the years depending on the team's competence and his motivation.

Il Lione retired in '95.

Correct!

Funnily enough it was his team mate Massa and his engineer Rob Smedley that threw themselves fully into the project, team made a flight case that opened up into a mini-simulator with steering wheel and screen so Massa could practice his race starts/measure his reaction time from different grid positions while he was at home, travelling etc

Surprisingly, Alonso wasn't that bothered until he saw how consistently quick Massa's starts were, then he became very interested and started to put some practice time in

Can't find any of Massa's 2011 starts on YouTube but this start with Alonso at the Spanish GP shows the type of advantage the drivers had

https://youtu.be/ZssrGoKxRl4?si=K7iahEV-rOsO4mZI

Keep your eye on the RB to his left, big, big difference in get away time :cool:

Legend

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Deal done Sargeant out Franco Colapinto in for rest of season

Who? :confused:

Yep here is one link on the swap .

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/colapinto-replaces-sargeant-at-williams-for-remainder-of-f1-season/10648348/

Just checked his previous racing achievements

Not exactly a long list of championships

Maybe his dad offered to pay off Sargeants crash damage repair bill

Looks like Mick Schumacher will have to stick with sports car racing . Still not a bad gig . Unless at the last moment Audi or Mercedes make a move .

Who indeed!

With all the lip service paid to the F1 Academy you'd think that at least one of the idiot talking heads at Sky F1 would have mentioned that none of the dickwaggers running the teams have deigned to put one of the ranking ladies in a car. Dorian Pin or Abbie Pulling have the goods to make it, but nah, got to promote another rich son up the chain. The same idiot talking heads then continue to bleat on about another dude as if he's the second coming.

So, if you're gonna put in someone few have heard of, why not promote from the pool of players you keep telling us you're promoting because you want to grow the fan base?

Didn't Earn It :rolleyes:



Sargeant's uncle is a billionaire,
and I'm sure that didn't hurt him.
Naither did being from the USA, a market that F1 is
aggressively trying to capture (3 races now in the US).
But the crashes and terrible performance did.

Colapinto doesn't have a rich uncle, or daddy.
but he does have Bullet Sports Management:
a very aggressive PR and management firm.
They have made a celebrity out of him
in Argentina and that generates $$$.
And Argentina loves their F1 drivers.
At least until until Carlos takes over the ride next season. ;)

Ahhhh, he makes perfect sense now

F1 doesn't have any South American drivers, he'll probably bring in more $'s into the sport than any American or woman driver would

Yeah strange choice. F4 Champion in 2019, but not much more than that, surely there are plenty of reserve drivers that they could have got?

How many races until he takes out the car? :)

Franco Colapinto looks like a racer, already
 

The junior academy that each F1 team has is there for a reason . Apparently he has proven enough for Vowles to pull the trigger . I wonder what expectations Vowles and the team will set for him ? Will he just be expected not to wreck cars ? Or will he be pushed to get points ? Will be interesting to watch . I wish him well .

Didn't know until today Sargeant was the 1st USA driver to score points in 30yrs

Only in the points because 2x drivers were disqualified

USA smashes the Olympics, surely you can find one or two drivers that could do better than the 5 or 6 drivers that don't deserve their seats