Sargeant to race in F1 using number two as Ricciardo’s three is unavailable

2023 F1 season

Posted on

| Written by

Logan Sargeant has chosen the number he will race with when he makes his Formula 1 debut next year.

The Williams driver has selected number two. However he admitted it was not his first choice.

Sargeant originally planned to race as number three. Daniel Ricciardo has used that number since the FIA allowed drivers to select them in 2014.

Although Ricciardo will not compete in the 2023 season, the number three remains allocated to him “throughout his career in Formula 1″, according to the rules. The number will not be available for anyone else to use until two consecutive seasons pass without him entering a round of the championship.

Sargeant has therefore chosen to use number two, which he last raced with in 2018, when he finished fourth in the Formula Renault Eurocup (pictured).

“I used to run it in Formula Renault, and I had a pretty good season that year,” he said.

Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren, Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, 2022
Ricciardo’s number three won’t be available before 2025
“Number three is my number, but that’s taken so I figured why not take a winning number from the past and run with it in F1?”

The number two was last used by a driver in 2017-18, when Stoffel Vandoorne chose it. The last driver to win a race in car number two was Mark Webber at the 2012 British Grand Prix.

All bar one of the drivers who will participate in the 2023 F1 season have selected their numbers. Nyck de Vries, who will also make his debut as a full-time driver next year, is yet to confirm his choice.

View the current list of 2023 F1 drivers, teams and car numbers

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

2022 F1 season

Browse all 2022 F1 season articles

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

27 comments on “Sargeant to race in F1 using number two as Ricciardo’s three is unavailable”

  1. Wait what?!? I’ve never heard about number allocations. What is this nonsense? When was it introduced?

    1. Wait what?!? I’ve never heard about number allocations. What is this nonsense? When was it introduced?

      It was introduced for the 2014 season. Have you been living under a rock? How did you think the drivers got their current numbers?

    2. This is a joke, right?

  2. The Williams driver has selected number two.

    I thought the number 2 was reserved, but it isn’t. The rules changed in 2013 removed the restrictions on this number. The number 1 is restricted to the previous season’s World Drivers’ Champion’s discretion, while the number 17 has been removed from availability in reverence to Jules Bianchi, who was killed in a race in 2015.

    1. #2 has been free for a little while already, given how long ago Vandoorne’s F1 career ended.
      @drycrust

  3. These recent rules with the number bother me more than any new rule. Maybe the new point system is one step above, but it defenaitly sucks.
    I still prefer the way introduced in the ’90, were the numbers match the championship possitions more ore less.

  4. Hopefully Sgt will do better than the last Williams driver to race with number 2 (a good quiz question)…

    1. Frentzen in 1998? I think a podium finish and 7th in the drivers’ championship is some way beyond what Sargeant can expect, sadly.

      1. That’s right, you win a number two. Sounds like Frentzen actually did better than I remember. That season with the red cars felt like a new low for Williams at the time. We had no idea…

  5. The last driver to win a race in car number two was Mark Webber at the 2012 British Grand Prix.

    And he didn’t do too badly for a number two driver! (although this was 2010)

    1. Mark Webber did terribly for a Red Bull driver in the early teens, though, not once managing to come even second in the World Drivers Championship.

      1. He only raced one year in the ‘early teens’ – 2013, and he had 8 podiums that year (Vettel completely dominated that season) which wasn’t that bad for his last year in the sport. In 2010, if he hadn’t crashed in Korea he would have won the world championship.

        Thing to remember about that era is that RedBull never had the gap to the field that Mercedes had during all the Hamilton championships, or that RedBull had this year. For example in 2010 4 drivers could have won the championship in the last race, with Vettel winning out. In the 2012 season there were 8 different winners from 6 teams! Their biggest margin was 0.3 seconds over the field, and often they had less than that. Most of the time Webber was within a tenth or so of Vettel, so the margins were small.

  6. I think the number system is way past its sell-by date. The days when cars needed a big white disc on the side with a number in it so that people could work out which car it is are long gone. There is just no point to numbering cars anymore. Drivers are routinely identified by a three-letter abbreviation, and have been for years. Numbers are now just a layer of bureaucracy. They give office geeks something to do while pretending it is important. It isn’t. Traditional? Since when has F1 been about tradition?

    1. Since when has F1 been about tradition?

      Since they stuck with open wheel cars despite there being pretty much no reason for them other than tradition.

      Don’t disagree about the numbers though. Leclerc is the white-striped Ferrari, Sainz the yellow-striped Ferrari. Since there are no other Ferrari’s, there is really no need to overcomplicate it by trying to figure out where the numbers on the cars are, or which driver uses which number to begin with.

      1. Michael, I cannot remember now if it was McLaren or Williams who first started the trend of putting a different coloured marker on the two cars, but whoever it was, it is such a good idea. It would be even better if all the teams would agree to use the same sort of marking style, e.g. a white marker for the first car, and a black marker for the second, so that I’d have more chance of remembering who was who. I used to like it when drivers had really distinctive hemet designs, like Coulthard’s saltire helmet, for example, and stuck with it for their whole career. Nowadays the helmet designs are so elaborate that it is difficult to identify them at a distance.

        1. Just look at the T-cam. One is black, the other is yellow.
          There is no confusion.

          And there’s no point complaining about their helmet designs when you can’t even see them anymore when they are in the car.

          1. I think the helmets are still reasonably visible, but the elaborate designs and branding makes it harder to pick them out. Usually it is easy to distinguish Hamilton and Russel because of the yellow vs black whilst Sainz and LeClerc both just seem predominantly red in a red car, and much harder to distinguish. I think one reason F1 is more popular than sports car racing is because people can see the drivers instead of just seeing cars, so whilst the halo is great for safety, it does take away some of the human aspect that people identiy with.

        2. It would be even better if all the teams would agree to use the same sort of marking style, e.g. a white marker for the first car, and a black marker for the second, so that I’d have more chance of remembering who was who.

          It has been the case for years that cars have been distinguishable by different colour accents on their T-Cams, which might have originally started when Ferrari added red accents to their prime car during the 2002 season. (European GP, as far as I could find)

          I’m not sure when the colouring scheme for the T-Cams was formalized across all teams (2007, I think), with red accents initially denoting the prime car and yellow the secondary, until the prime’s T-Cam switched to black after Michael Schumacher’s second retirement at the end of 2012.

          So a team’s cars have been marked for the past 20 years, and consistently across the field for 15-ish.

          1. It’s amazing the things you learn on here. All the stuff I wrch, and somehow it had completely slipped me by that the camera colours have been standardised for years. Thank you.

        3. I remember Sauber used to have different coloured headrests for their drivers in the late 90s, which made it easy enough to tell them apart. I think that predates the differently coloured T-cams.

          1. Sauber ran different coloured mirrors on each car (fluoro orange/yellow) in the early 90’s.

  7. Every year when they announce the numbers for the new drivers, I nervously wait to see if anyone steals my lucky 36.

    Despite there now being absolutely zero chance of me ever contesting a formula one grand prix.

  8. I think they should open up that reserved number thing. I doubt Ricciardo will stop smiling even if Logan takes his number 3. If DannyRic is coming back in 2024 he could have the privilage to get back that number and if he doesn’t then let the guy have it who raced it in the previous season.

  9. I think it is totally fine having a number 2 when you first get into f1.

    1. The speed those cars go, I’d have a number 2 every time I hit the brakes.

  10. Shouldn’t a number be reseved for a single season, though? Idk, I’m still confused, as people claim two, but Hartley chose 28 as his regular number in late-2017 less than two full seasons after Stevens had used 28.
    Therefore, if the two-season reference has been true ever since I first saw this claimed, the timeline rule must’ve changed post-2017 because otherwise, Hartley would’ve been forced to choose another number.

Comments are closed.