Logan Sargeant was close to becoming a Mercedes junior before joining Williams

Williams Racing driver Logan Sargeant has disclosed that he was in contention to become a Mercedes-AMG F1 junior.

Sargeant is currently in his rookie season in Formula 1, having been given a race seat after coming through Williams' young driver development program. He came fourth in Formula 2 in 2022, which saw him get an FIA superlicence and confirm his spot on the F1 grid.

However, things weren't always smooth for Sargeant in his formative years. Having lost out on the Formula 3 title shootout in 2020 against Prema team-mate Oscar Piastri, he was looking at prototype sportscars for the following year due to budget issues.

In the off-season after his F3 title defeat, Sargeant stated that he was evaluated by Mercedes, but opted against joining them as he was unwilling to spend another year in F3.

“I just finished that 2020 season. It was a disappointing end of the year, of course. Went to Mercedes, did two days on the simulator. I loved it. I honestly thought it was a great two days,” he said in an episode of F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast.

“And from what I understood at the time was that they wanted me to do another year of F3 with Prema. That just wasn’t the route that we were ready to go. And obviously that was another big boatful of cash that wasn’t there. So, yeah, I feel like there were more variables than [not being good enough for them],” he added.

Williams’ team principal James Vowles, who was with Mercedes until 2022, spoke about the Silver Arrows' interest in Sargeant earlier this year.

“He came to Mercedes as a sim evaluation [driver] and I was interested in looking at him because he had performance, especially when you go back to his F3 performance in an average team. He was there with Oscar and I rate Oscar also highly. At the time in Mercedes we had a good suite of drivers. So that was where my relationship with him ended,” he had said.

“He then, prior to me arriving at Williams, Williams funded, it’s very important to state this, his F2 career, so he is now salaried as a professional driver and Williams funded him because they had deep belief that he was the real deal. And my reticence came from the fact that prior to that it’s difficult to really judge him,” he added.

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“I’m excited and ready” - Logan Sargeant looking forward to Spanish GP

Logan Sargeant and fellow rookie Nyck De Vries remain the only drivers who are yet to score a point in the 2023 F1 season. The former sits rock bottom in the Drivers' Championship, just behind the latter.

Sargeant made a good start to the year when he finished P12 at the Bahrain Grand Prix. Since then, however, his finishes are P16 finishes at the Saudi Arabian GP, the Australian GP, and the Azerbaijan GP.

The 22-year-old is looking forward to the upcoming Spanish GP to turn things around for him and his team. He told the Williams F1 website:

“I’m excited and ready for Barcelona this weekend. It’s a track I have a lot of good memories at from the past and enjoy driving on. It should be quite tricky with conditions and generally being a high degradation track, but we are prepared for the weekend.”