Former Williams Racing Formula One driver Logan Sargeant made his NTT INDYCAR SERIES debut at the Thermal Club in California on Tuesday. The Florida native drove the No.6 Meyer Shank Racing Honda to get his first taste of what the car is like. Four-time Indianapolis 500 winner and team co-owner Helio Castroneves was on hand to give Sargeant some tips about the Dallara chassis.
“I thought the Indy car was fun for sure, it’s very different from any other car that I have driven before,” said Sargeant. “I felt like we were chipping away at it throughout the day and were trying some different set up stuff – some good, some bad. I’d say the most surprising thing was how the tires were pretty ‘peaky.’ They were pretty difficult to nail on a lap, I had thought that they would have a bit of a longer peak.
“Working with MSR has been amazing. Everyone on the team is great to work with, everyone is super nice. It’s a great atmosphere here and I had a nice time working with them.”
Meyer Shank Racing may have a full line-up for their NTT INDYCAR SERIES program in 2025 with Felix Rosenqvist joined by Marcus Armstrong who joins the team from Chip Ganassi Racing, but Mike Shank was keen to see what Sargeant could do in the INDYCAR machine.
“The goal was to have a look at him. “We’ve always felt that he deserves a shot at something over here, whether it’s in INDYCAR or GTP or whatever the future may hold. We went ahead and had a good, strong look at him. He’s one of those top F2 guys and he got his shot at F1 and now he has a shot at INDYCAR and we really wanted to see what he was all about.”
He (Sargeant) was everything that I had hoped for and he caught on really quick. “He helped us through a lot of things that we had to get through with Honda and he was pretty much what I expected to be honest. And on top of that he is just a good person, we like to have good people around. You never know what may happen in the future, but we now know what we have with him for sure.