Former F1 driver David Coulthard has questioned the long-term future of Logan Sargeant, who he suggests is performing worse relative to his team-mate than Nyck de Vries.
De Vries' F1 career turned out to be short-lived. The Dutch driver earned a seat for the 2023 season off the back of his substitute performance for Williams in 2022 but struggled to make an impact at AlphaTauri this season.
After failing to score points in the opening ten races of the season, Helmut Marko and AlphaTauri terminated De Vries' contract and brought Daniel Ricciardo back to the team.
Meanwhile, at Williams, Logan Sargeant is also enduring a tough rookie season.
The young American has failed to score a point to date, while team-mate Alex Albon has notched up 11 points for the team.
Coulthard: Time for Sargeant to step up
"I actually don’t think it’s a matter of time, it’s a matter of pace, Coulthard told Channel 4 (via the Mirror) when asked about Sargeant's long-term F1 future.
"This is a stopwatch championship, so you either deliver the lap time or you don’t.
"He was on average within about two-and-a-half tenths of Yuki Tsunoda, which actually, the worst-performing person on average is Logan Sargeant in the Williams.
"He’s half a second away from Alex Albon.
"He’s bringing money to the team and given a bit of space, American, that fits I guess the overall growth of F1 right now.
"So I think we should only ever look at the lap time rather than... this isn’t a personality competition."