THERMAL, Calif. — Former Formula 1 driver and American racer Logan Sargeant took his first laps behind the wheel of an Indy car with Meyer Shank Racing during an NTT IndyCar Series test at the Thermal Club on Tuesday.
With MSR’s IMSA and IndyCar stable of drivers set for the 2025 season, MSR team co-owner, Mike Shank chose to give Sargeant the opportunity to explore a new kind of racing machinery while also helping the team make offseason progress to prepare for the upcoming season which gets underway in March in St. Petersburg, Fla.
“The goal was to have a look at him,” said Shank. “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 F-2 guys and he got his shot at F-1 and now he has a shot at IndyCar and we really wanted to see what he was all about.”
With the day consisting of three sessions, Sargeant was quick to get up to speed in the Indy car and adapt to the nuances that the car has to offer. Sargeant’s pace was among the quickest of the six cars running on Tuesday, topping the time sheets following the morning session.
With 80 laps completed, the young American racer left the test feeling both confident and satisfied with the performance in his first time behind the wheel of an Indy car.
“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.”
With the goal of evaluating Sargeant for potential opportunities in the future, Shank was pleased with the performance that he saw from Sargeant.
“He was everything that I had hoped for and he caught on really quick,” said Shank. “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.”