Everybody's Going to Court

Howdy, hi, hello. Welcome to Engine Failure, a culture newsletter that dives into what the fuck is really going on in Formula 1. It’s written by me, Lily Herman.

Pals, I cannot believe how much #content has gone up since we last spoke during Thursday's bonus issue. Whew! My head is spinning!

Before we get into the usual shenanigans, this is a usual reminder that an all-new episode of Choosing Sides: F1 drops tomorrow, and we’re covering AlphaTauri. Fun! Oh, and if you like the pod, please go be nice and leave a five-star rating and review. If you don’t like the pod, well, I hope you find something else that better speaks to you and leave them a five-star rating and review. It’s nice to be nice!

Lastly, for some strange reason, quite a few people who subscribe to this newsletter still don’t know that I’m a professional writer and editor by trade who covers/does a lot of other stuff that actually pays money. One example: I interviewed debut historical romance author Zoe Sivak (who’s a fellow F1 fan, which I didn’t know until I chatted with her!) about her book Mademoiselle Revolution. Anyway, enjoy! Let's get this show on the road...
 

Part 1: There’s Something About Logan

It's no secret that I’ve spent a lot of time pondering the ~journey~ of Logan Sargeant. He’s been on my radar ever since he joined the Williams Driver Academy about 10 months ago, but as long-time readers know, he’s been a steady stream of agita for me ever since — despite my many attempts to really, really give him a chance.

To recap who the hell Logan Sargeant is for the millionth time: He's a 21-year-old American Formula 2 driver who’s currently in podium contention in the championship. While Williams obviously believed in him enough to sign him to their development program, I think everybody's surprised that he's done this well in his first year of F2 — to the point where even Williams F1 head honcho Jost Capito has said he’s paying special attention to how the young ‘Merican pans out. Logan impressed the higher-ups so much, in fact, that he's earned the opportunity to drive a Williams F1 car during a free practice session at the U.S. Grand Prix in October. In other words, he’s really coming into his own as the next great American hopeful for the Formula 1 grid. (That is, of course, while the silly season disaster over at McLaren plays out.)

Seeing as the man might be this country’s best chance of getting an F1 driver in three-quarters of a decade (and during a time with such a massive upswing in American interest in the sport), I’ve spent much of 2022 paying attention. You can read more of my various Logan musings here, here, here, here, and here.

Given that Formula 1 in particular carries such a hefty price tag though (and has been the barrier to entry for many Americans trying to get on the grid over the years), I was understandably curious about where that money was coming from in Logan’s case.

And uh, well, after some very basic search engine keywords…things inadvertently got very interesting. (This is where y'all need to take a few deep, calming breaths before we get started.)

A lot of this information has floated around quite a few motorsports subreddits with little traction, but let’s chit-chat about the Sargeant family for a second. To kick things off, Logan’s dad Daniel Sargeant (a well-known Republican donor in Florida political circles), as well as several others, were indicted a few years back for bribing officials in Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela in order to obtain business for their global asphalt company Sargeant Marine Inc. (Prosecutors said at the time that the firm made $38 million in profits because of these transactions.) In September 2020, Daniel agreed to pay $16.6 million in fines as part of a plea deal. (That amount was originally $90 million, but it was apparently lowered due to an inability-to-pay claim, according to the Wall Street Journal.) 

Separate from that bribery mess, Logan’s uncle is Harry Sargeant III, a billionaire and high-profile Republican donor in Florida who was once sued by the brother of the King of Jordan and implicated in former president Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry, among many other things. (Whew, whew, and WHEW.) Relations seem to have been quite acrimonious between Logan’s father and uncle for a long time; in fact, several family members had been suing each other for years over various grievances before they finally came to a bankruptcy settlement in 2015. But as those various lawsuits were playing out, Uncle Harry alleged at one point that Daniel spent millions of disputed dollars on Logan’s (and his brother Dalton’s) racing careers. Huh. (For his part, Logan’s dad accused his brother of buying a $7.5-million mansion as well as private jets and expensive cars. Oh, and somehow claims of sex tapes and stolen phone messages were also in the testimony. What a fun crew.) 

Now back to the bribery scandal in fall 2020 where Logan's dad was ordered to fork over millions of dollars. Guess what happened six months later in February 2021? News broke that Logan wouldn’t be able to move to Formula 2 that year despite his success in Formula 3 due to unspecified funding issues. (Logan mentioned in an interview that he “never really had the full budget to do [Formula 2]” and didn’t get into the particulars. However, he said months later that he’d relied on “some family money” and a few “personal sponsors” to previously fund his career. Again…huh.) As we now know in hindsight, Williams’ support for Logan came in October 2021 when he joined the team’s development program. The rest, as they say, is history.

To some, the Sargeants’ legal drama almost seems like a drop in the bucket compared to decades of white collar crime and financial scandals connected to many of the F1 grid’s drivers, sponsors, team owners, and more. (I’m not saying that's a good thing, just that’s it’s a strangely run-of-the-mill story for this absolutely ridiculous sport.) And to be clear, I’m not implicating Logan himself in whatever was going on with his elders, though I will say it lacks a liiiiittle bit of introspection on his part to say in multiple interviews as a Williams Driver Academy signee that his favorite movie is The Wolf of Wall Street. Lying isn’t necessarily a virtue, but it wouldn’t hurt Williams to coach him into telling people he loves Frozen or something a little more endearing and a little less on-the-nose given the…situation. (Logan has also said that if he wasn’t an F1 driver, he’d probably do “something in business” for a career, which again, probably isn’t the best look all things considered. Williams, when I was growing up in Florida, every kid said they wanted to be a marine biologist. None of us knew what that meant, but adults thought it was cute. Basically I'm suggesting you tell Logan to just say in the future that marine biology would be his non-F1 career!!!! It’d seem quaint and Floridian!!!!)

Now that this chain of events has been established, let’s switch gears and talk about how this whole debacle has started bleeding into the Formula 1 fandom – and the question of what it’d mean to support Logan if he were to make it onto the F1 grid.
 

Part 2: Logan and the Fandom

A week or two ago, I started seeing tons of tweets like these ones calling Logan a “Trumper” or a racist on social media and wondered where they were coming from. It appears these comments were responding to an old 2018 Instagram post from Logan where a Twitter user alleges that the driver changed the caption of the photo from “Make America Great Again” to just “W.” This has, of course, led to quite a few folks poking around Logan’s background (including some of what we covered above) and making a lot of assumptions about his political and social leanings.

Oooooooof.

Folks, as a political writer who covered the Trump administration and two presidential elections for five years, not to mention a former resident of the state of Florida and a lover of all things fandom, I’ve never felt more qualified to unpack anything IN MY LIFE.

Let’s go!

This question over what the hell the F1 community — specifically the American F1 community — is supposed to do isn’t really a new line of inquiry. Every type of fandom you can imagine has dealt with the object of its eye coming under scrutiny: One Directioners, Potterheads, you name it. (That is, of course, except for those of us in the Saoirse Ronan fandom. Stay unproblematic forever, queen!)

What makes Logan such an interesting case is the fact that America — and its deluge of long-time and newer F1 fans alike — have waited to see one of their own on the grid. It’s been seven years since Alexander Rossi drove five races for Manor Marussia in the mid-2010s. Scott Speed was the last American to complete a full F1 season back in the mid-aughts, and an American hasn’t won a Formula 1 race since 1978 when Mario Andretti took victory at the Dutch Grand Prix. Think about that: For as good as this country is at so many other sports, we haven’t stood at the top of the F1 podium since a time when Jimmy Carter was president. (Andretti was also the last American to win an F1 World Drivers’ Championship, which he achieved that year.)

But at the same time, not having a driver from this nation on the grid has been somewhat of a draw for many Americans to this sport. There’s a certain amount of healthy distance we can keep from the competitors since they all come from elsewhere; coming from a country that’s so centered on itself, it can be a relief to put that mentality aside every race weekend. On the flip side, some U.S. fans take this to mean they can feign ignorance when it comes to how some of their F1 favorite drivers behave on the track or off of it.

However, Logan Sargeant would evaporate that distance and force us to yet again confront some difficult issues about this country. Not to mention, he represents a very specific “character” in American culture. Even if you didn’t grow up in Florida among many a Logan Sargeant™ like I did, I can guarantee that if I showed practically any American a very classic photo of Logan (like here, here, and here), they’d know exactly the regional and class-based stereotypes such an image represents. All this to say, he's at a strange intersection of many hard questions.

So, do we need to ~shun~ Logan Sargeant as a fandom over these potential problems? Well, first of all, the guy hasn’t even finished F2 or taken a spin in the Formula 1 car quite yet. As we all know, motorsports as a whole is wild partially because shit can change on a dime. One second, you can be the most promising person coming up the junior ranks, and the next second, you’re out of contention for a seat entirely. The vibes are high-key #YOLO all the time.

But if Logan were to make it to F1, I suspect we’d definitely see a couple of fractures in the U.S. fandom. For some folks, Logan’s upbringing — and alleged political leanings — might be a dealbreaker. (I do think, however, that if Logan’s background is a problem for you but the histories of several other drivers on the grid aren’t, that may be something to individually interrogate a little bit. It's a good exercise!) For others who just want to see an American on the grid at all costs, it won’t be. But I do think it’s important for us as a collective to keep having these conversations for as long as Logan’s in the mix and long after. Healthy dialogue (not cyberbullying, I should clarify) is an critical and normal part of any fandom.

All of that said, I think we’d be having an entirely different conversation if Logan gave us literally anything personality-wise. I feel for Williams’ comms/PR team, who are obviously working around the clock to make this man marketable to a larger audience. It’s just not panning out, and not for lack of trying on their part. Even Alex Albon, who’s told everybody and their dog over the years that he doesn’t love press stuff, is able to put on a show for the media and has endeared himself to fans. (The Albon Pets Instagram account also helps matters.) Logan very clearly doesn’t have anything to mine or switch on and off like Alex does, and the fact that he’s an attractive young guy will only get him so far.

I suspect the debate around Logan as a “worthy” American representative in F1 will only grow as his momentum picks up. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: He may not be the driver everyone in this country wants, but considering what an absolute fucking mess our nation is, perhaps it’s the one we deserve.

(Photo credits: Logan Sargeant.)
 

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• How did McLaren’s Zak Brown become the main villain of silly season?

• Who unseated Lewis Hamilton from the F1 fashion throne for a day?

• What can we learn from how Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz play chess?

Ah, I love to publish a bonus EF issue all about silly season at 10:30pm EST on Thursday and wake up to even more news just 12 hours later. Everything is great!!!! All of that aside, welcome to the limited-run silly season section of Engine Failure. (Thank you to delightful EF reader and accomplished romance novelist Andie J. Christopher for inspiring the name for it! And may we all find a Father Patrick in our own lives.)

Here’s the latest breakdown of what’s gone on since we last chatted about the bizarre summer break situation we find ourselves in:

• The tides have definitely turned and the rumor mill is fully reporting that pistachio scone Oscar Piastri will take Daniel Ricciardo’s seat next year at McLaren. We’ve yet to hear anything official from McLaren, Danny Ric, Zak Attak, or Pastry Man, and apparently there may be some wacky contract things that need to happen with the FIA — or even in a court of law. (Meanwhile, Zak Brown has been uncharacteristically quiet over the past week or so. Maybe he’s busy looking into tattoo removal.)

• Is Mick Schumacher staying at Haas? The team reportedly feels less pressure to lock him down immediately given all of the silly season musical chairs. I’ve heard some rumblings that Mick may not be driving for Haas at all next year, but nothing has been confirmed in the slightest, so I’m not putting any stock in that until we hear something. Who knows!

Going back to the McLaren calamity, I think multiple things can be true at the same time: I’m not sure we’d be having this conversation if Danny Ric had spent the past year and a half rocking it, and at the same time, it’s still not fun to watch this Zak Brown circus across multiple motorsports series play out in the press. (In fact, I’m already very tired of it!!!!)

Thank you to everyone who wrote into last issue’s Conspiracy Corner question: You can start any F1 silly season rumor you want and it’ll come true. Which one do you put out in the world and why?

We had yet another week of record-breaking CC responses (WHEW), to the point where the following is maybe only 15% of the answers I received. Y’all had much to say about silly season! Oh, and lots of people want Seb to become Ferrari’s new team boss!!!)

• Sarah: Gunter to Ferrari strategy. Kimi to Williams. Jamie Chadwick to Williams (because we all know she deserves it). Pato and I are getting married. Wait, did I say that out loud?

• Pam: Danny Ric is moving to Haas, where his love for all things America will be the secret sauce to bring [the team] back up the driver rankings.

• Bec: Christian Horner decided that no driver is good enough or will ever be good enough to partner with his favorite bebe Max and will be taking the second RBR seat himself.

• Natasha: Binotto and the Ferrari strategy team to be replaced by the spirit of every driver that Ferrari has fucked over. You can't look me in the eye and tell me Sebastian wouldn't be a better team principal.

• Courtney: Pierre Gasly leaves Alpha Tauri to join Alpine. Together, him and Esteban must overcome their long-time beef and cement themselves as the “Baguette Boys” as they campaign to get the French Grand Prix back on the circuit.

• Byrd: Charles, Pierre, Carlos and Yuki are quitting F1 to start a boy band called G Flat Spot, leaving so many free seats on the grid that Nyck de Vries simply MUST fill one.

• Erin: McLaren should do 2023 driver seats as a competition. For each race, if you are the slower of the two drivers, you're out and someone else takes your seat for the next race.

• Jess: Seb is still retiring, but the FIA are in talks to create a new position for him for next season: Emotional Support Uncle. Miss Q3 by 0.001? Ferrari screw up your tyre strategy again? Just hop on down and have a chat with Uncle Seb. Hot tea and homemade honey always on hand!

• Molly: After long, hard hours in couples therapy, Alpine's favorite toxic power couple will return to the grid together: Danny and Cyril are back, baby! Why? WHY? The vibes have been off since the Alpine rebrand. We NEED Cyril and I need more Dyril (Cynny?) content. Their break up on DTS... [Insert meme of the little boy laughing then dissolving into tears.]

• Susie: Nando isn’t actually a human, but is rather a slightly melted wax figure who was animated using the magic of pettiness and desperation.

• Kacie: Danny Ric and Colton Herta to Andretti F1 Racing. Himbos of the world unite to put the American F1 team on the map!!!

• Nikki: Max is so inspired by Seb’s example that he retires midseason to become a stay-at-home dad. Daniel takes his seat, Oscar takes Daniel’s seat, and Mick becomes teammates with Esteban. Antonio takes Mick’s seat at Haas.

• Andie: Zak Brown offered DR’s seat to Jack Wolff, but he’s already driving for Williams in 2023.

• Alexis: Zak Brown and Guenther Steiner had a conversation about the 2023 driver lineups that got quite heated after it was revealed that Zak was using the same sorcery that he unleashed upon IndyCar towards Mick Schumacher. Guenther then fok smashed Zak Brown's face into a door and he’s now undergoing reconstructive surgery, which is why we haven’t heard anything from McLaren about driver lineups. Zak Brown thinks he’s untouchable and Guenther is small but mighty, and if it came down to who I'm backing in a fight, my money is on Steiner.

• Dara: Pato O'Ward, Colton Herta, Jehan Deruvala, and Oscar Piastri ALL get drives in F1 in 2023...with Chip Ganassi Racing. The quote in the press release attributed to Chip, which he does not deny, is "I never understood why this series doesn't allow four-car teams anyway." (He is ultimately allowed to put two teams on the grid, one of which is immediately nicknamed Minichips.) The quote he gives to reporters off the record is "Suck on this, Zak Brown."

• Ravneet: In honor of Niall from One Direction posting his July photo dump on Instagram, my dream silly season rumor would be Lewis Hamilton is taking up a singing career (because he’s our multi-talented king). The first song he releases will be with Niall Horan singing a ballad about the struggles of Mercedes this season. I imagine it goes something like this (to the tune of Justin Bieber's 2010 hit "Baby"):
  
  Ohhhh, ohhhh, ohhh.
  Mercedes, you said you love me.
  I know you care.
  But what happened
  This year?
  This car isn’t it.
  And I just can’t believe you’re letting me down, down, down.
  Mercedes, Mercedes, Mercedes, ohhh.
  Like, Mercedes, Mercedes, Mercedes, ohhh.
  You will always be mine mine mine.

Today’s question: All 20 drivers of the F1 grid are playing Survivor. (The full 39 days plus the traditional tribe swap, merge, and jury stages.) Please pick only ONE (1) of the following four questions and describe your answer:

1. Who’s the first driver voted out of the game and why?

2. Who becomes the first member of the jury and why?

3. Who makes it to the end of the game but is verbally eviscerated by the jury on the way to losing — and why?

4. Who actually wins the game and why?