#tabby!!!

So let’s talk about Checo Perez and Logan Sargent’s treatment in F1. Checo is 34 and has been in the series since 2011 after a really successful early carer in both karting and the junior series. Logan Sargent is 23 and also had a very successful carer in the lower classes. When Checo was in karting the lowest place he got in the championship was fourth. He was the youngest driver to be champion in The Karting Youth Course. Then in 2007 he switched to British Formula 2, and won the series on his debut with podiums in two thirds of the races. He continued this trend into his later years in F2, and in 2008 he was the first Mexican driver to compete at that level since Giovanni Aloi. Then he joined Formula One, debuting with Sauber. He was the fifth Mexican to compete in F1 and joined the Ferrari driver academy in October of 2010. This is a lot of information all at once but it does show that Checo was a good driver from the beginning, he was consistent and fast. However in 2011 Sauber was a lower field team and as a result he struggled a lot to be competitive in the championships. This continued when he joined McLaren in 2013 because they were also a midfield team at the time. According to his teammate Jenson Button during the Bahrain Grad Prix of that year, “He’s extremely quick and did a great job today-“.(ESPN) Checo was driving very aggressively against his teammate and they collided a couple times on track. He started doing better and getting podiums but he encountered a lot of car issues dUe to his car being a midfield competitor. He was showing improvement at the end of 2015 when he finished ninth in the standings. He continued to improve into 2017 and 2018 when he switched to Force India. He got his 8th carer podium finish in Azerbaijan in 2018 and was the only non RedBull, Mercedes, or Ferrari driver to podium that year. Then he won in Sakhir from last place, which makes him the first Mexican driver to win in over 50 years. After that he signed with Redbull in 2021. He was doing a lot better, finishing the season in fourth and was consistently in the top ten during races. Even very early into their run together Max considered Checo a great teammate saying” Checo is an amazing human being. Not only just to work with in F1 but a super nice person-“He continues later in the article with, “It’s very rare to have a team mate like that and what he showed today, he was a real team player and I really hope we can continue this for a long time.” (formula1.com) This will become relevant more later when we start to talk about the current season, but its important to keep in mind that even in December of 2021 Max considered Checo a good driver and teammate. Checo would continue to do better, getting third in the championship in 2022 and winning in Monaco in the wet. And then got his 20th carer podium in Azerbaijan of that same year. He consistently got 1-2s with his teammate and helped hold off other cars. In 2023 he continued this by helping defend against the McLarens and Ferraris and as a result helped create massive gaps in the field. He ended the Championship in second and continues to be Max’s teammate at Redbull until 2026. Overall Checo is a good defensive driver, he tends to be very consistent and is good at overtaking. When he is in a good car he can drive very well, and he is a good teammate for Max Verstappen due to his more calm attitude and driving skills.

Logan also has a similar record albeit a significantly shorter one. During his 2008 karting debut he got third, then he got another third place in a second karting series that same year. He was the first American to win the CIK-FIA World KFJ Championship (yes that is the real name of the championship)since 1978. In his UAE F4 debut he podiumed in fifteen out of the 18 races and ended the championship in second after his teammate. The following year, 2017, he got third behind his teammate, and future competitor, Oscar Piastri. He continued this patter of high championship standings until he joined Formula 3. He ended up getting 19th in the championship, which is very low but he wasn’t in last place. He joined Prema racing in 2020 and started doing better again. He finished the championship in third that year, but he left Prema the following year and ended the season in seventh. He moved up to formula 2 after being backed by the Williams academy. In 2022 he had his first practice F1 debut, which makes him the first American F1 driver to participate in a Grand Prix weekend since Alexander Rossi in 2015. Then he joined the Williams Formula one team in 2023, he was the first Williams academy driver to drive for the team. And the first Williams driver to be a rookie under James Vowles. Who was the new team principal of Williams. The team was not doing well, they struggled to get points and generally function. But Logan was the first American to score a point in F1 since Micheal Andretti in 1993. In 2024, Willams decided to make Logan give up his car after Alex Albon’s crash during the Australian Grand Prix’s practice, citing the team forgot their spare chassis. After that, there were a couple races where Logan was racing with a rear wing and other parts from last year’s car. Overall Logan reminds me a lot of when Alex drove for Redbull during his debut. Logan was very good in the junior series and I think he could be better if he was given a car that wasn’t like wrangling an angry goat every weekend and maybe another year in F2. It would also help if he had a car that was fully updated and not use essentially as Alex’s backup car.

Both Checo and Logan had pretty similar results in their junior series and karting years. I think the biggest difference between Checo and Logan is that Checo always had a purpose to the team, he was never meant to be disposable. Checo, with his defensive skills helps create large gaps between Max and everyone else, Logan was meant to show that Williams was no longer Mercedes’ feeder team. Which he has in a way, by showing just how much Williams is drowning. Logan was pulled into F1 too early and it shows, if he was given another year he probably would have done better. With Checo they have to be keeping him on for a reason even though he’s been lackluster this season, and the public probably doesn’t know what it is. Redbull, if anything have a talent for throwing out underperforming drivers, we’ve seen it happen countless times, like with Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, and Daniel Ricciardo. If Checo didn’t have something the team wanted he would have been replaced by now, we all know that Helmut wants him gone. And like on that, most of the talk of Checo being kicked stems from Helmut, you know, the guy who has a history of being racist to Checo. Why would people believe the number one rumor spreader in the paddock as if he’s a reliable source? I think the only commonality between Redbull and Williams is their team principal’s being embarrassingly unprofessional at the driver’s expense. If I was seeing that my boss was saying that I was going to lose my seat every race weekend I probably would be stressed too, especially if the car is clearly not working. How is it that Max Verstappen himself said that the car sucked and there was no need to worry about Checo and yet people are still blaming Checo? The car is already built around the hyperspecific needs of the number one driver which has proven to be incredibly hard for most other drivers to drive, and it isn’t working this year. At some point you have to starting thinking critically about the team. If the data isn’t matching up in the sim when applied to the actual car then there a bigger fish to fry than a teammate who’s doing okay in a more competitive season.

At least we know that both teams share an air of unprofessionalism around their second drivers. Doesn’t it rub you the wrong way when you read about James publically talking about him thirsting over Carlos Sainz as soon as it was announced he lost his seat? Loudly? Over and over again? I think it was all over in Australia, I’ve never heard of a team making their driver give up his car for his teammate. And how do you just have your spare Chassis unavailable? I genuinely believe Logan was rushed because James wanted two things from the young driver. One, he wanted to show that Williams wasn’t a feeder team into Mercedes anymore. And two, he wanted someone to essentially be fodder to test things on until they figure stuff out. I don’t think James would have been so adamant about trying to get a new driver if it wasn’t Carlos Sainz, due to his knowledge of engineering. Redbull on the other hand, has Helmut Marko, he constantly complains about Checo’s pace and while that’s a good point, he isn’t doing well, at some point you have to actually help your drivers. It also doesn’t help seeing yourself being insulted on social media. During this years Dutch Grand Prix practice 1 Checo got 12th and most of the comments on Redbull’s post were insulting Checo. But then during the testing at the beginning of this season when both drivers were doing poorly, all the comments were worried that the team was sandbagging and hoping that they would do well in the race. Checo also gets a lot of bias against him in the media, especially the British media and Sky sports announcers. It’s once again a thing of only bringing up Checo being Mexican when he’s doing poorly but when he’s doing well he’s a Redbull driver. A similar thing happens to all the other drivers who aren’t white and European. I also looked at the Willams posts about the practices and everyone showed more pity for Logan, saying things like “I really feel very sorry for him” Ect. In fact I only saw one direct insult, “Least he’s winning the world destructors championship”. And then I looked at another practice post to make sure the results weren’t skewed due to his crash, and no it was actually better, most of the comments were calling for Logan to get a better car, or believing Logan could be a good driver later. However both of the driver’s personal instagrams have only positive comments as far as I can see. But I do remember there was a period when Checo would get a lot of hate comments on his posts. It’s interesting to me how people can acknowledge that Logan is struggling due to his car but they can’t do the same to Checo even when 1. His teammate is complaining about the car, and 2. These same people will say that Max’s ex-teammates struggled due to the car. I wonder if it’s because Checo has been driving for so long and was pretty successful compared to Logan who was beaten down since he started.