Williams team principal Jost Capito says Logan Sargeant deserves a free practice outing this season as a result of his recent form in Formula 2, and that he is putting himself in the conversation for a future race seat.

Sargeant took pole position for the F2 feature race at the French Grand Prix on Friday night, earning an extra two points that closes the gap to championship leader Felipe Drugovich to 37. That comes after back-to-back feature race victories for the Floridian – preceded by a second place – and Capito says Williams is set to use him for a rookie outing on a Friday at a future race.

“I think that would be obvious,” Capito said of Sargeant getting an FP1 outing. “We haven’t announced it yet but of course we have our young driver academy working very well.

“We had three good results recently, Logan won the last two races in F2, he put the car on pole yesterday, so I think he deserves to get into the car.”

The United States Grand Prix in Austin would be the most likely setting for Sargeant’s run, but beyond that Capito admits Sargeant could give him a tougher decision to make regarding the Williams 2023 line-up if he continues his title challenge.

“It would be a great headache wouldn’t it? I’ve had worse ones!

“Of course we are impressed, it’s his first season in F2 and we didn’t put any pressure on him so he has the time to develop and he’s really impressed us how fast he got to grips with the car, about the tire management and getting results. How he got the pole yesterday was really impressive and he will be in a Formula 1 car in the future I’m absolutely convinced.”

However, one issue with any hopes Sargeant has of getting a Williams seat in 2023 is the timing of the season, with the final F2 race taking place in Abu Dhabi alongside the F1 finale.

“He needs the Super License points so for that he has to finish top five in the championship. At the moment it looks good but it can always go the other way pretty quickly, so it’s quite tricky to take early decisions on a Formula 2 driver as long as the season is not over. So that’s part of the decision-making, of course.”